Strange Growths
by Cakes Blargh
Summary: Patrick Gordon. Accountant, divorcee, and attentive father. His bowling league think he's a little weird, but a nice guy. He's not what his mother wanted him to be... but when his 'brother' comes calling, he might have to embrace his family legacy after all. Sometimes a Pariah just can't run far enough away.
1. Of White Doves and Black Ravens (Part 1)

Woohooo~! Finally the first chapter is done! This is technically Scriv's idea, so this fic is a collab. Thank him instead and also thanks coincidencless, because she had to go through it THREE times! THREE times!

This fic actually bloomed from Scriv's post:

"Now, Pariah, did you remember to brush your teeth?"

"Mother, I'm 38 and in another state entirely! Stop nagging me!"

And now I'm running off and making it into something serious out of it.

* * *

**Strange Growths**

* * *

**Prologue: Of White Doves and Black Ravens**

* * *

_1999, Vandenberg Air Force._

"How's the subject doing?"

Philip Hayden slightly turned his head when his colleague settled behind him. His gaze moved back on the screen.

"He has completely vandalized his room," Hayden reported, hiding his amusement when he leaned back into his chair.

"Really – do you know how much a pain it is to arrange a renovation with the stuck up Blackwatch?" his colleague grumbled in annoyance.

"It's just a little bit of crayon," Hayden replied lightly with a helpless shrug, fighting back his grin.

There was a light thunk when his colleague jabbed at the TV's screen with an index finger.

"That ain't little!" And sure it wasn't, for the room was completely full of nonsensical rainbow doodles of every colour the crayons could provide. Hayden had to admit, the boy was an artist.

"We have plenty of rooms in this facility to house him if one room needs maintenance."

"He broke the incinerator in our last experiments, Hayden." The tone turned growly. "He hasn't even reached his limit of how much high the temperature he can handle!"

"It broke because he clearly has an obvious dislike. Isn't that a tell-tale sign he reached his limit?" Hayden pointed out.

"But how long, Hayden? He never let us find out about that."

"He never lets us find out about anything. He's stubborn that way. Boys are like that," Hayden replied.

"That's why we have to push, Hayden."

Hayden turned around fully and stared deeply into his colleague. "Ten years ago, we did push," he began, "To the point we might have lost any benefits of Project Crusade. To the point we could've failed. He's stubborn to the point of suicidal. Don't. Push. Him."

The old man sighed and settled back into his chair. "Besides, the point of Project Crusade is to convert him into Blackwatch use. Their original plans were to make him… their soldier."

"Yeah." His colleague snorted in disbelief. "As if they can make use of a thirty year old boy. It's obvious the boy is another of Hope's failed children. Looks fine in the outside, but obviously screwed in the inside. Doesn't age – no, cannot age. You can't make a soldier out of a child who can't reach his prime mentally and physically. Why else hasn't he shown any inclination towards escaping?"

Hayden was starting to get annoyed by the junior scientists of his group. Say what they want to say but despite the looks, Pariah showed signs of immense intelligence. Hayden knew. Crazy as he was, he had seen glimpses of it in those mischievous green eyes.

"His only use is to be a lab rat for the rest of his lifetime," his colleague continued. "And he doesn't even make a good lab rat. The results are inconsistent and points at nothing! His virus—"

"That's enough," Hayden snapped.

"... sorry, sir."

"Just review today's footage and hand in the reports on his behaviour," Hayden ordered before turning his eyes back on the screen, on the boy laid in the middle of a bedless white room.

Pariah had both of his hands up in the air before twisting and doing strange gesture with it. Hayden just watched – until the footage defocused. The screen went red much to his annoyance, giving a poor visual of the subject. They were almost blind if it weren't for the vague shapes behind the thick red.

"I thought the technician already fix the problem," Hayden told his colleague as he tapped against the screen.

"The other cameras have the same problem as well."

Hayden grumbled as he leaned back into his chair.

* * *

White his ceiling was. White were his florescent lights. White were his clothes. White walls... White. White. Clean.

All through his years, he had live in whiteness. In a colourless world. What colours came were in the experiments. Fire and its bright orange-red presence. Streaking blue from the electricity. Deep aqua green from his time in the water, just for them to see him breathe something other than clear water. Yellow in surgeries from the glaring lamp light. Pitch blackness of a vacuum room, airless and without oxygen for his skin and lungs to breathe. Grey in the glistening of steel from tools of many kinds. Brown and green from the rare days of the time outside during his childhood.

But red? Blood and red in his rage, in his time of utter despair when his mother would not respond genuinely with life but rather with repetition and brokenness even as primal as she was.

Links, connection, whole – yet she wasn't more than a simple husk whispering the same lullabies of comfort to her only living child. But she was the only family since Hope.

She treated him like her other simple children, brutish children whose thoughts were nothing more than to follow their mother's command out of prescribed devotion and love. The children in the visions and her vast mind. Hope.

He, he does it by choice and that spoke much. Choice was a sign he was more than just a creature of design, unlike his mother. That he knew from comparing himself against his mother. That he learned from one of the simple experiments – of badly named games the scientist offered him to play. The scientist Philip Hayden taught that lesson unknowingly to the mute autistic face he put on.

Confusion swirled in him. For what is he but his mother's child, of nature that was tinkered by man's hand regardless of the consequence. For that he was a child of science as well. But he followed his mother more because she was his mother. Because he was a child and alone with none to provide intimacy and affection besides her whispering love. So he followed her example. He waited.

But his own experiments taught him he could do things that these white coats couldn't. That he was stronger than them, faster than them, even more intelligent than them. So what was it about these walls that kept him and his mother from acting, from unleashing a dream of connection and links?

Why did she not respond, act, to save, to break against what held them separate? Why did she not come? He was impatient. Confused by the questions, he wondered… why? He questioned the visions, the future like how the white coats questioned everything... the hallucinations that were his mother's dream of the world and he had grimaced at that. He wasn't so immune at all by his captivity. But the questions did not stop. Acceptance of the situation leads to being stagnant. He wanted answers. His mother wasn't giving him ones that satisfied him. It could not be that simple!

It led him to reluctantly admit that his mother was flawed. A husk. She was repeating broken meanings that only he could understand. Too simple. Too accepting. Why must they follow!? These questions swirled in him… but ironically, he came to accept them as his mother had come to accept the binds that she followed.

He envied nature for that. He envied the white birds, the doves that came down on the ground. That visited him in his dull humouring of the white coats and black trainers. So simple, they accept their role, so free… so beautiful like how the visions once were – until questions ruined those visions. Another part of him wanted to rebel against the flow. To become what his mother feared worse. But then if he did became one of them… wouldn't that make it easy to dismantle them? To destroy them?

Except that was to let them win. He did not like them winning because it would give them the means to increase the amount of experiments, the level of dangers in them, the infliction of pain. He was taught to play games and to win, without realizing they were winning all the time. His young-self learned that and began to play the same game.

As they watched him and did their experiments, he watched them and did his own experiments. He implanted his virus into their brains when they were preoccupied despite cameras watching him. He manipulated his virus in the monkeys.

He ruined their results. He gave them nothing. He pulled their thoughts, he planted his, even ordered their bodies into doing things, he made them sick on his bad days by making his virus mimic other diseases in their body, he learned what was in their minds, what their thoughts were on through the hivemind. Small jerks here and there. He did all he could do while maintaining this farce of an autistic boy.

Yet his experiments were so full of limits, he couldn't do much but focus and concentrate on small details else they learn what he was up to. Control. Improve and control was all he could do. Theoretically, if he could do those small details, he could do it on a bigger scale. All he needed was plenty of concentration, and he had that as well as his patience.

He was careful not to give them any clues and hints of what he ultimately can do to them. What he was capable of… even though he himself didn't know how much more he was able to do. _Perhaps I need creativity_, he'd mused in realization as he painted his room blood red when one of his trainers had annoyed him.

Of the world outside, he learned from glimpses of their memories.

But memory and experience were different. The pain remembered in memories was not as real when experiencing it. Through Redlight's view, the world was in pain, screaming for help. It was splintered and through those visions, it showed a future of a family that were one and complete, of a means to ease the pain. It called a deep part of himself to act, to force change just as the same call that held mother into inaction.

Splintered it is, how the humans see the world as in there are parts that are hard, others easy, happy, sad, and each a maelstrom of emotions. But never pain. Pain was just a phase, a piece that would come to pass. Just acceptance of how the world is. Curious, how swapped those views were. Humans accept, yet mother's views asked for a change.

What mother wanted was a loyal son. What Blackwatch wanted was a promising soldier of the future, a weapon. What scientists wanted was the purpose of all lifeforms, of the cure to everything.  
And he could be any of those. He can make his virus like mother's, a churning machine of every known and unknown disease.

The vaccine to all or a weapon that can control these diseases, to incite them on his enemy. The cure for the world's pain ... or its inevitable future of incurable disease. Or both. Or none.

He didn't become any of those. He didn't grow. One because he couldn't. If they wanted him to reach his prime, they would have to give more food than the proportion of a healthy adult. Food though was enough for him to deal with the injuries of what his surgeries and experiments brought. Two, because he wouldn't. Frustration to Blackwatch, to the scientist and... well mother lacked any response.

She didn't find his rebellious nature frustrating. She let him be, much to his annoyance, much to his reluctant inclination to feel neglected… ignored by his mother. She wasn't ignoring, she was just being what she was. A husk.

It was 1999, thirty years of captivity and he was going to be educated and trained even though it was fruitless. Blackwatch would push until something broke. Everyone had given up on him, except for Philip Hayden. That fifty-year-old man hadn't given up, and that told of even stronger conviction than to see how far he could handle their games. Hayden believed in him. Of what? The cure of humankind, of bringing a future that wouldn't have disease to take loved ones away. That man was delusional. Pariah knew that because Hayden saw himself as his son. The dead son who died from influenza.

Hayden was patient. He did not push unless ordered by the higher ups. He was the only one he would tolerate. Pariah hated to admit it, but he was fond of that scientist. The scientist would give him candy bars whenever he could, and be present in pleasant experiments that were just to test his mental capacity. The simple games that didn't force him but rather waited for him to move the chess piece.

If all of them were as pleasant as Hayden was, he might have given what they wanted. But mother's love was tight on him.

"Hey kid!" he heard one of the black uniformed brutes grunt.

Pariah placed his hands down on the floor. He laid in the centre of his drawings, where he could feel the tugs of his biomass traced across the floor all around him. It was but small specks against the speckled layers of crayon. Humans cannot see as much detail on the corner of their sight as he can.

If this worked, _it will be but in a minute_. Enough for the switch. He needed to be quick though. Activating his virus would release more than billions of chemical reactions in a nano second, hence heat. Heat was the biggest giveaway even though he knew his virus would utilize every means for minimum waste. Keeping his body from shapeshifting, his offline virus forced him to keep organs and inflexible biomass. But that meant minimum usage of energy, close to being catatonic like his mother.

It was easier to manage in small portions, easier to survive that long despite the food given. He knew he could do it. He could do it small. Then he could do it big. He was determined to make that true.

"Hey kid!" the soldier shouted down on him, now standing over him.

Green eyes moved to the corner of the room, where the camera watched it all. The biomass touched the wires… wriggling the slightly loose wires – but not to detach, but to scramble the signal as another layer of biomass covered the lens.

His eyes fell back on the floor, and his drawings moved, whipping out thin-like metallic cords.

"What the—" Coil upon black coil wrapped around the soldier before it tug hard enough for the soldier to slam down onto his knees.

Pariah was suddenly up, face to face when he jabbed his hand into the neck.

They wanted his virus for the next generation soldier… well he would give it to them. But not like how they expect.

He could see brown eyes behind the mask's lens widening as his vision blurred and swirled in black with flesh splitting into dark tendrils. Soldier and boy became a mass of tentacles and all of a sudden, they parted.

* * *

Philip Hayden shook the TV again, the screen clearing in a sharp focus, enough to see the boy escorted out of his room with one of the insufferable Blackwatch.  
Damn cameras… Hayden sighed then frowned at the drawings on the floor. He leaned forward and squinted.

"Can you read that?" he asked his colleague and pointed at the drawings.

"Mieux… vaut être seul." His colleague leaned forward. "Que mal accompagné."

"What?" Hayden asked.

"La seconde pensée est la meilleure," His colleague continued.

Pariah wrote that? Most of the time he wrote in broken english... a game he usually played to see if Hayden could decipher. Hayden zoomed the camera in. Crayon-version of Planet Earth covered the floor… yet again, red always dominant in the landscape. There it was though, the words Hayden picked out, doodled so lazily, almost unintelligible. Sloppy.

Where did the boy learned French? He only had one scientist who was French but he was in no way part of the group meant to educate the boy.

* * *

Driving was not so hard from the memories he tapped through the hive. Learning to walk and get use to a new perspective of being taller than a ten-year-old kid was harder. As he drove away from the facility, he recalled their last words.

_"What are you doing here?" the voice muffled through a hazmat suit, broke into his silent farewell._

_Philip. Philip, he wanted to chide. But remained silent until he remembered he was a Blackwatch soldier now._

_"Just curious," he replied mildly._

_Jars, rows of jars amongst other things displayed on the shelf… jars containing... he reached out his hand at one of them, barely touching the surface—containing…_

_'Family', mother whispered._

_"Don't touch!"_

_He put his hand back to his side when the scientist came up to him._

_"Hope's children. They all come out with defects?" he asked lightly, even knowing the answer._

_"… yes. It's no wonder the boy is autistic since they all didn't come out… right." He looked at one of the jars. A baby with two heads and with two arms on one of its side. Conjoined twins._

_"They don't share the same virus as… Pariah?"_

_"No. None survived their third year." Philip said stiffly._

_He'd seen glimpses from the others' memories. But experience was nothing like memories. He knew they were somewhere in this same base. To see them for real…_

_There could be others. There could have been others. Siblings. Pariah stared. Siblings that could have been like him. Real siblings._

_Except none survived. None came out right. Only him._

_"How did you have access to this room?" Hayden said accusingly._

_"I have access to wherever you go. I was meant to watch over the scientists of this facility," he lied but it was also true. Blackwatch was there so that their scientists didn't stray too far. Blackwatch watched every scientist they have in their list. Mother had GenTek, Pariah got a mixed team from different medical company and race._

_He could hear the sound of a grimace behind the hazmat suit._

_"Doctor Hayden. Did you find out the meanings of the French words?"_

_The black window of the suit paused before turning towards him._

_"Best be alone than in bad company. Second thoughts are the best," Hayden answered quietly._

_"Never knew the kid knows French. Thought he was a dumbass."_

_In satisfaction, he noted the hands tightened into a fist._

_"Well so long," he said before leaving the room and the scientist alone with his siblings._

He stepped out of the California hot sun and shut the Humvee's door. In the window, his reflection gazed back at him. A stranger's face stared but with a flicker of black tentacles, green eyes replaced the brown ones and a thirty-year-old man with sandy buzz cut hair faced him.

With a tilt of his head, he examined and then flicked away the excess of the black uniform into the Humvee as with the key. Without care, he abandoned the car and walked off to the horizon. Where he knew one of the cities was, LA.

Leaving the past of his lab rat times, knowing he had broken a mind of a soldier and shape-shifted his own body against his will… to that of a boy. All of his virus in the facility would die, deactivated by his will. They would get nothing, not even from his doppelganger.

He walked. He could've ran. But he walked, basking beneath the heat of sunlight, the feel of outside. He treasured his lonesome time outside, free. Finally free.

He grinned. Free.

As the city grew closer, sounds approached his sharp ears. The sound of on-rushing cars and their honking. The sound of how many thousands of footsteps walking and running on pavements. Of the hiss and rumble of machines, engines. The buzz and hum of electricity in wires. So many sounds he couldn't identify and a whole lot more loud than what he remembered from the memories.

Breaking his long habit of mutism, of his force of habit on slamming any emotion down deep into him, he yelled to the sky out of jubilant, excitement and annoyance. FREE!

* * *

His excitement ran out as quick as the wind. The city was a crowded and rowdy place. Ten times, he almost got hit by cars from his impatience to just cross a damn street! Humans everywhere. Invading his space. He almost snarled at the next woman who had stood right beside him as they waited for traffic light. But his habit of mutism kept him controlled. Control… control is important, he thought, grumbling.

As sour as he was at the small space, he could not help but wonder at all the sights he saw. Bright were the lights at night and as alive as it was at day. Cities never sleep, especially great one like LA. They are always businesses to run; to waste time is to waste money.

For three days he took his sweet time, walking between the tall buildings. He got lost plenty of time. From the darkest seediest place, to the higher up ends of money, he studied these humans in curiosity. In wondering. They were certainly different and more concerned in their life, what dinner to make at home, why the neighbor was acting suspicious, and many trivial thoughts that didn't concern the next stage of science.

He could not rest or hear his own thoughts with… these noises and human invading. And that was why he was in some dingy alleyway, late at night, having stopped and leaned against the brick wall. They ignored this kind of place, and he could understand. His nose wrinkled at the smell of trash. He had given up on keeping a sharp nose and just dulled his senses. Else being in a city would have driven him mad with all the noise and smell.

He missed his mother's whispering. He could barely hear her when all his senses were blasted by the city liveliness. Pariah blinked as he slid down against the wall and shut his eyes.

He was used to sleeping. Once, it was a means for him to be closer to his mother without being pestered by the daily activities. The day came with experiments, results, expectation, education, training, and of course, needles.

There was nothing wrong with sleeping. It gave him concentration to fix something wrong within him, as he had done for every surgery he had. It gave him focus when he needed to use the hivelink to snoop into their thoughts and know about the world outside.

He could learn things about his virus, what he could do without being disturbed and expected to do something.

It also preserved his much needed energy. Energy he needed for healing despite how much food consumption gave him.

So sleep was good. Being slow was good. Being almost catatonic was good. He followed his mother in a way. To wait. He had her patience. Plus it frustrated them, he mused with a smile.

Sleep led him to fall deeper into the hive. To be embraced by the warmth of Redlight. Despite her flaws, mother still brought comfort. He needed to know if the facility was alerted of any clue that he had escaped right beneath their nose.

* * *

He felt the snip of metals despite how many drugs he was under. His body refuse to respond to the sedative as they cut him while he was restraint on the table.

They all stood around him, silhouette against the glaring light. They reached down to grab him.  
Pariah shot forward and lunged.

The sound of choking cracked into his reality and he stared at the lowest scum of humanity staring back at him in shock. A homeless man. A hobo.

In his defence, his body was still cooling down from activating his virus. Once awake, it was stubborn to just shut down. He underestimated the feeling of infecting, the feeling of just… stealing cells to be made into his biomass. Warm and satisfying. Addictive. The rush of cells entering his body. Of feeling alive and… _whole_, as his mother would whisper.

It was a miracle he was still able to manipulate during such moments for the switch to be successful. But his concentration slipped, and so biomass had been stabbed into the old man, eager to infect, eager to have more biomass. Against his control, much to his horror and revulsion losing such control. A swirl of black tendrils and the world flash into pain.

* * *

Life was hard. That I knew. I was the guy everyone knew in my neighbourhood. The guy everyone would talk to.

My wife did say I had lovely personality. I knew how to cheer and give people good time.  
But then I lost my job. Things started to fall apart. I didn't give up my gambling, especially on football games. I was stupid but I believed in luck. It hadn't left me… but now it has. I couldn't afford insurance so things started selling.

We moved into a dingy apartment.  
But everything was going downhill. To make matter worse, my wife left. She saw the warning, the letter that said I was bankrupt.

Fucking hell. The only thing that was there was my dog. Now she... she never left me despite all the hardship. And then I realized, I couldn't even take care of my own family.

It grew worse until I had no home. Once everyone's guy. Now a nobody scrounging in people's trash, stealing from people, breaking in people's apartments. But I didn't give up. Fuck up I was, I made a promise to my only family. I would take care of her.

It's not fair she was loyal to me and I couldn't part with her. So all the food I earn, I gave a half of it to her. She was skinny as shit, and I knew she wouldn't last in the street. It doesn't help she became sick soon after.

So here we are, wallowing in the alleyway.

I was reckless and stupid. But I'm not going to fail. Stupid and delusional John, but fuck that. Sass here at least will know her owner loves her. Unlike anybody else in this shit life that promised they would be there.

Now to find an unlucky fella in the alleyway, sleeping, was an opportunity. Never mind the black army pants and boots, there's gotta be wallet in there.

Biggest mistake, I felt the fingers inside me as green eyes glared crazily into me.  
Fuck, Sass—

* * *

Pariah stumbled back into the alleyway. He groped his head at the swirl of thoughts. Uncontainable, uncontrollable thoughts. Emotions, feelings, experiences and knowledge mished and mashed without his guidance.

For so long he sat in the alleyway. Curled up, face hiding between his knees. Mother offered her love… but he swatted in rage. This was his battle and war. He will do it himself as he always had.

A whine cut into his thoughts, and for some reason he responded instinctively to it. A dog. A brown Labrador with pale fur sat not far from him, staring with beady black eyes. A dirty strip of cloth was wrapped around one paw. She got that wound from a fight… which had led to an infection.

He groped his head and tugged at his hair frustratingly at these uncontained thoughts. The whine called again… and it cut deep into him. He just got up and walked away, only to stumble. The pull to go back to the dog was strong. He just wanted to leave.

He left and walked a few yards before coming back to stand before the dog. Curiously, he tilted his head.

"Sass," a stranger's voice croaked out his mouth. Unused to those layers of flesh – flesh full of memories and a bag full of regrets. Regrets that weren't his but were affecting him. He hated that. He hated what which he couldn't control. It reminded him so much of the helpless time, of when he was young and naïve.

The dog just whined in answer and let out a painful heavy exhale.

He never had pets. The first time he saw something close to one was a dove. His young self had imagined the ones that visited him were the same one from his other session outside. Their white colour should have repulsed but they were so… free. In a way, he discovered the meaning of beauty when the bird set itself to flight. Unbound. Free to go and do whatever they wished to do. And then, he learned to infect.

Mother had said it would make it all the better. It didn't. It made it ugly. It wriggled and struggled as the pustule tumor grew in seconds. Bind by such mess, they were grounded, they weren't free.  
He never wanted to infect again, despite his mother's whispering. Until… the urge became too irresistible. And he wanted to know. He was tired of losing. And mother would be quiet.

The monkeys the scientist used to hold his virus; nothing but tools for him to learn what he could do. He could kill and make them sick… he could also cure. He could undo any modification. Make them normal even. Or make them stronger and smarter then dumber than ever. His learning resulted in irregular results in the scientist's records.

He never cared for any of them.

The dog sniffed its master's shoe. He could… he could, the alien thought whispered. He could make her better. Pariah crouched down before her and reached out.

She would be of use. He could use something like a dog, if memory served him right about what they could do. She would be able to run and be happy again instead of this shit – Pariah quietened his thoughts with a small crease between his eyebrows.

Links… whole… everything for the better.

The dog whined when he touched her.

For the better.

But death could also be for the better. It's called Mercy.

* * *

He was an imitator. A great imitator. The same as how his virus could imitate other symptoms of other diseases, so was he able to imitate other people… by simply watching, listening. It would take a few practice and then he was completely someone else with face and voice. His time learning and trying to understand his human captors paid off.

What's left missing was memories and his target's DNA running in him. But he could easily steal both off them without tainted by their regrets and emotions, and none of them the wiser. He would make himself forget feelings from the memories before they truly settled in. The same way how he dealt with countless of pain during his lab time. Simply switching off a part of him.

Pariah was incapable of empathy. To have another's was so strange and confusing. It made him angry. It made him frustrated. He wanted to tear something up, he wanted to tear himself and get these thoughts that were not his out of his head.

Love for another besides his mother was an alien concept. What did he care than his own desires and that of his mother's? He taught himself never to fulfil another's unless there was something in it for him, hampering any growing empathy he had for the humans. Even made him independent despite his mother's love.

He did not flinch when he snapped the woman's neck as his body snatched her cells while breaking down her brain. Her own – but now his – mutated cells cannibalizing and digesting its own. He could consume without the trouble of assimilating another's brain, without losing any precious mass for missing out the head. As long as his virus doesn't infect the brain, the cells would just digest it as food would be digested in stomach, albeit quicker.

He did not want those humane thoughts for all they did is bring nothing but trouble. They're nothing but monsters. After all… monsters begat monsters.

But didn't he have the memory of a man who was the lowest of the low to prove this wrong? He swatted such realization away until his moods became soured. He hated these questions.

Something cold dropped on him, and more soon came. He looked up from his sour mood and stared at the grey cloudy skies.

It was raining and flash of lightning streaked. A boom soon followed.

It was raining… this was the first time he felt rain. It. Was. Raining. Cold tears of the skies drop on his face as he looked up, staring in wonder. So cold and wet it was. Gentle not like the jet-drop hot waters at the lab. Again, memories were mere windows. Experience was for real. He slowly smiled and cherished such moment, made it his.

There was a sound of barking and he sat up straight from his lazing on the rooftop.

"Sasquatch!" he yelled hoarsely, not use to talking but sighed when not a single frantic footsteps of frisky paws came.

'Sasquatch!' he yelled into his tight connected hivemind.

He was replied with an overtopped joy. Are dogs so easily that pleased? A burst of black feathers smacked into his face but he immediately grabbed the wriggling creature. Black feathers quickly turned to fur and the big Labrador was rolling on top of him before settling its muzzle on his lap.

He stared at the dog… well not dog so much but strange esque-creature who tries to pull a bird sometimes. Would explain its short attention span it has. Sometimes it becomes a cat just to annoy the other neighbourhood feline, only to be bullied by them. It was strange such creature bigger and stronger acts like a chicken when a smaller one fights back.

Sasquatch just stared with her beady black intelligent eyes as rain fell on them, her black fur glistening from being wet. Pariah just scratched the hair beneath his beany, puzzled by this dog's frisky behaviour that alternates to an obedient child who wants her parent's approval to an energetic troublesome one.

"You ate another bag of trash, didn't you?" Pariah stared accusingly at the dog.

Give a virus that gives the ability of cells to breakdown everything — metal, bricks, glass… And a dog would use it just to be filled with trash.

"You're going to have aches for that. Don't blame me when you're in pain," he told the dog.

She was smart. She understood now more than she had and whined at her master's coldness.  
Good. She's listening. Because she didn't listen when she had burst into a black blur after he just had cured her, given her the means to be stronger.

Cue a homeless man running through the streets, shoving other people just to get his overeager dog.  
The first thing she did was eating a whole bag of trash. And from the smell and noise it made, it wasn't something organic. Or pleasant.

Sass has a thing for metal cans. It's one of her favourite things. Pariah couldn't understand why such thing can give great happiness. A dog's mind was a whole lot different than a human's. Befuddling, a puzzle, and puzzles made him curious… and obsess. Hayden had noted this trait of his aloud in one of their experiments.

Hayden… Pariah thought grew sombre when reminded. He… sort of missed that intriguing scientist. Hayden's probe on his psyche and mental capability was amusing, it also taught him to stretch his conscious.

Too bad he was going to be retired and Pariah was not sure he had enough patience to deal with a newcomer, or any other current scientists.

So he left. And really… he wanted to visit his mother. Pariah looked up in the rain, his head facing east, towards New York City.

Why doesn't she respond? Why doesn't she act? The age-old questions came. He grimaced at the thought.

Perhaps if he was there for real, she would respond. Perhaps she was actually waiting for him, all this time. For him to save her, she just doesn't know it.

But even so, why did she ask him to be calm. When he was seventeen, he was willing to take on the world, ready to break out. He was tired and so angry at his captivity… but mother quelled his anger. She tried very hard to keep this son from exploding in anger against humanity.

And Pariah knew why. Love. Links, connection, whole – infect out of love, a family love.

_'Not anger,'_ mother had whispered.

No, never anger. She didn't want him to destroy. Humans… with all their flaws, she still sees them as children who needs their mother. She confuses them as the siblings she holds in her blood, in her vast mind. Did she confuse them as her Hope family, their family?

He doesn't know.

He scratched Sasquatch's head, deep in thought before standing up. He looked down at the cheerful black Labrador, lolling its tongue out.

"Wanna go to New York?" he asked. He didn't know why he was asking a clearly lower intelligent creature. But it's nice to know how they feel about it.

Sass stood up on four legs and woofed. He smiled and dash into a sprint, cracking the concrete behind him. As the roof's edge grew closer, his biomass flex and release, launching him through the air, grinning as he felt the rush of air and cold rain trickling past him.

A black blur past him, Sass sprinted ahead, woofing happily as he raced after her.  
Freedom was never this sweeter.

* * *

A brush of shoulder and a grunt, he slightly turned and murmured a, "sorry."

Pariah walked away, smiling when the GenTek scientist walked into the gate. Now all he needs is to wait for his virus to spread amongst the staff like the common flu, riff through their head, pick some poor fella with the highest access, and take his place.

Easy, but what to do in the meantime. He stopped and stared at the surrounding tall buildings. It's New York, the city that never sleeps. It wouldn't hurt just to have a walk around.

He sighed in his gazing, he did not feel a single jerk from mother even if he was here. What's stopping her? He turned his gaze to the building behind him.

_Why wait when I'm here now?_ He's not angry. He's not here to destroy. Yet she still doesn't respond besides giving her usual soft assurance.

He did not want assurance. He wants a respond.

Restless, he walked. He itched to draw his frustration into a splattered mess on white.  
There were no white walls here. Just red bricks, grey concrete, tinted glasses and metals.  
No petty Blackwatch. No petty white coats. Just—

'Bird!'

Sasquatch. Pariah glanced down on the black dog standing by his feet, beady black eyes gazing at the skies in wonder.

She hasn't eaten a proper meal for a week now. A few trash, a branch, birds, cats, even rats. But no humans.

No exact sign of aggression or primal instinct of a hunter. He simply healed her from infection and made the virus assimilated, other than that, he left it to nature. Didn't touch her mind… if converting her brain into brain matter didn't count.

'Ball!'

Pariah blinked at the image of white sands and a red ball thrown so far… What did her owner do to bond with her or waste time? What was fun for Pariah? He skewed his face at the thought. He sounded like Hayden just now.

The answer was nothing. He always grew bored of the games Hayden introduced and he wouldn't let them see more than he wanted to. He had to play the autistic child after all.

'Ball!' Sasquatch interrupted his thoughts again as she paced back and forth excitedly in front of him.

He sighed and just drawled, "ball."

At the immediate statement, she burst into running, disappearing behind the numbers of pedestrians. But not at a frightful blurring speed, but of a normal dog's.

He followed her, using the tug in the hivemind that was clearly belonging to a jubilant dog.  
It wasn't far. She led him to New York's Central Park before running around in circle like some wild energetic spastic child. He just stood there and watched long enough for her to calm down.  
Sass wisely did and sat down on the green grass, waiting.

How the hell she knew where to go amazed him… or maybe she was using a bird's memory.  
Pariah then realized he didn't have a ball. The hobo in him just answered steal from one. The lab rat though… he creased his eyebrow.

With a quick glance around, he looked at his pale hands. Flicker of tentacles, and a ball was on his hand. It was a red rubber ball. The solid ones that bounce so easily. He had one when he was eleven just like the one he was tossing up and down in his hand… until he decided to throw one at a psychiatrist head, cracking her skull and broke her neck on impact. Not to mention it was in her head.

Biggest whoops, because Hayden was actually pissed at him when that happened. He made him feel guilty with that passive aggressive thing Hayden likes to pull for no absolute reason at all. The psychiatrist was annoying, and she was pretty close to discerning him. Everything she says Blackwatch would take it as true. So if she said 'not autistic', everything goes down the shit hole. She was a threat. Threat has to be eliminated.

Sasquatch woofed at seeing the magically appearing ball. He tossed it a few feet only to take few seconds for Sasquatch to shove it back to his hand.

Pariah stared at the dog and Sass just gazed back at him. A challenge, eh? He smirked at the dog before arching back. He aimed and threw the ball in an arch… right into the distant lake.

"That was a dick move," a woman's voice commented behind him.

_Well you can fuck off_, the alien thought snapped while Pariah just silently growled at the nosiness of humans.

If he really was a dick, he would've thrown it in a straight shot into someone head just to see if Sasquatch would eat the body first before bringing the ball back.

Something wet nudge his hand and he looked down to see a very wet black Labdrador with a red ball in her mouth. It... only took her a few minutes.

He wondered if he threw it halfway across Manhattan would she able to get it back. After a brief staring and soft riffing through her head, Pariah realized she was one hell determined dog. She would probably cross Hudson river if he happens to throw the ball across it.

Getting the ball back was her pride and joy. It's like every time she got it back, it was some major accomplish that made the world better tomorrow. Except she knew it wasn't like that, yet she does it. And for what… to make her owner happy?

"Girl, you don't need to do that," the words popped out of his mouth without his knowing.

That broke his mood.

"I'm not him," he said flatly to her.

She just stared at him. Then what was he to her?

Hopefully not some father figure, Pariah balked at such thought. He didn't know it was his thought or the hobo's.

To distract himself, he tossed the ball only for her to jump straight up in the air and snatched it, seemingly pleased when she handed it back.

Pariah stared at Sasquatch for a long time. He needed to teach her how to control else he was going to get into heaps amount of trouble.

* * *

He wasted no time and activated his virus. From his view on the rooftop, he could see through the apartment's window, of a man stumbling onto the floor because of the most mind-splitting migraine before collapsing altogether.

The man was a perfect candidate. Level A access, no current relationships or close contacts. No one to be bothered if he temporarily vanished.

"Wait here and keep watch," he commanded his dog who obeyed immediately by sitting down on all fours.

Pariah took his time before pausing at the locked apartment's door then at the gap between door and floor. Risk the chance of frying the guy's brain just for him to open the door, or… Pariah squeezed his eyebrows together in concentration. He unraveled into a black pool of biomass that slid under the door before reweaving back into form on the other side.

Holy… Pariah stumbled and clutched his head. That was the first time he did something like that. Completely lost most of his five senses only to have one changed and extrapolated into extremely sensitive. It was strange for one to just feel their way in.

He blinked rapidly before gazing at the collapsed body not further away from the exit. Marching over, he crouched and pressed his hand against the neck.

The GenTek scientist was slightly breathing. Rolling over the body, Pariah paid attention to the detail. The face, the way he dressed. Habits though would come later. Again, with a tight squeeze from his eyebrows, he re-weaved his biomass. Feeling the uncomfortable weight distributing different part of his being, Pariah got up and stared at his faint reflection on the window's glass.

Good enough, he would fix it later. Now though… he needed the memories. He reached down to the neck again before shutting his eyes.

Take his memory. Get access into the lab. Set everything up. Then take his place when everything is set up… after leaving the guy comatose in his apartment for a day, of course. Can't leave a missing scientist without raising some eyebrows.

* * *

_'Mother.'_ He pressed his gloved hand against the glass wall that held her.

A week… a week of toying the security cameras, he was now here… in front of her.

_'Mother,'_ he called out again softly into the hivemind, at the woman sitting in the middle of her prison, haunch over. Her head partially bald as if she had ripped tufts of her red hair in frustration.

She looked so frail… so weak… so vulnerable sitting alone. Anger flashed in his mind and he thought again of just killing everyone in this building.

Warm assurance embraced him. And shame washed down, he felt like he had insulted her… even though she did not rebuke.

Slowly, he tapped into the code before walking into the room. Crouching down before her, he reached out slowly and grasped her shoulder.

_'I'm here now. Just...'_ he grimaced. _'Just respond, please. All you have to do is just say it and I'll get you out.'_

Elizabeth Greene looked up, her green dull eyes stared… stared through him. She reached out slowly and grasped the hazmat mask with her bare hands, spreading red vein-like webs across its screen. He waited. He felt like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff.

_'My son...'_ he felt her warm voice in his head.

_'Mother,'_ he answered back. _'We don't have much time. Do you want...'_ He paused and stared at his mother who was now again lost in her thoughts. Thoughts about children, of the future, of the world crying around her… of the humans. Of her son saving them all. A son to love them all.

Pariah seethed at that last part. Save them!? Save them!? He stood up immediately.

_'I. Will. Not. Love. Them! Ever!'_ he snarled. _'They deserve to rot for all that to matter. I do not care of their future. They brought it upon themselves!'_

Greene covered her face with her hands and silently wept at his sudden anger, but he knew no tears fell from that face. But he still regretted it.

_'Why do you love them?'_ he pleaded. _'Why!'_

Was he not her son!? Wasn't he more real than the children within her mind! So why does she act so… indifferent.

Greene grasped and clutched his hand and for once she stared pleadingly with her green eyes. 'Do not destroy,' Hope whispered.

He tightened his fist together before looking down._ 'I won't,'_ he promised.

He still loved her, but... he gave an angry glare. _'But I won't save them. I won't help them. I. Will. Wait. Until the very last of them dies.'_ Softening, he gazed back at his mother sadly. One last time… _'You do not want to come?'_

She did not answer, her thoughts circling on him and the world. Him and the world. Him. The world. The Family. He sighed. Does she love them so much that she stays? Or was it just her brain totally fried of logic? One side of him, the angry rebellious child in him, spits and hiss of such former thoughts in envy and jealousy. The other… the calm part of him, spoke of the latter.

There was another voice in him, the one that wanted to violently pull his mother out of her state, to shake her, screamed at her mentally... that would've hurted her without care. That _selfish_ voice.

He backed away. He hated his thoughts. Why can't he just accept? It was so simple. Accept his mother's will, the hivemind's. The image of a white dove flashed, of being bound tight in pustules and mutated ugly flesh. Grounded… not free… flightless.

* * *

_10 years later. 2009, St Paul's Hospital._

The sun was dying on the horizon, casting a soft flame of orange onto New York. On the rooftop, a group of marines carried the hospital cot contained in a see-through plastic frame. They lifted it up with the patient contained in it and disappeared into the helicopter, followed with a doctor and a soldier.

That soldier paused before entering, staring at Manhattan one more time at its tall buildings. Signs of the apocalypse that had happened could be seen from the holes in the buildings, from military shelling, people's suicidal tendency and infected hunters that make use of pummeling everything, even through the buildings. Other than that, cranes from building construction and repair now dominated Manhattan.

The quarantine was lifted. The infected were gone after much ruthless stamping. Blackwatch was facing a heavy slam from the government.

And Alex Mercer, killer, monster, terrorist, just wants to get the hell out of here and get his comatose sister to safety. And for that, he had to handle the company of marines for three days. He growled beneath his mask.

All of New York's hospitals were full, plus with Blackwatch still there he was paranoid. Dana was everything they might need to restart the whole thing again with Elizabeth Greene. He wasn't going to let that happen in a million years.

Dana needed a team of scientists to work on her if they ever want improvement in her condition. So Philadelphia was the answer. Ragland's company and family lived there, and the doctor was clearly hinting for him to do this favour.

Convenient. He didn't care where they went as long as Blackwatch didn't know and couldn't get their sticky hands on Dana. They could even go to the moon if they had to. He wouldn't mind… well actually he would mind. A lot.

Because there was one thing Alex Mercer didn't like, was losing sight of any dangerous factor. He liked to keep anything that proved to be troublesome in his line of sight.

To leave Manhattan felt like losing sight of what Blackwatch was up to. What informants he had were from the military radio he held in his biomass and from memories of how many thousands men. He had no patience to hack as he always took granted the information that came from consuming.

But soon, information would be old news unless he adapted and found a new way on what Blackwatch plans to do next. They say stress is a great factor to force adaptation on the subject. Well he didn't like it. His guts tightened as he stepped into the helicopter.

But it was for the better.

He repeated that like a mantra as he stared at the pale body of his sister who was now under a different name.

Ragland better not lie about the company he keeps. He stared daggers at the doctor who took it calmly.

This was going to be a long journey.

* * *

A/N: Yeah. Yeah. Slow start and all. But we'll get to the Humor and Family part... in the next chapter.


	2. Right

A/N: Scriv is the crack and humor. Coincidencless is the one that makes my writing better. And I'm just a shit sleep-deprived writer! :D Word of advice, don't write pass your bedtime.

* * *

**Chapter One: Right**

* * *

"I might as well fight against cancer." Ragland rubbed his eyes as he spoke.

"Her immune system still hasn't reacted?"

"No," the doctor answered firmly. "That's why she's in a quarantine unit, Mercer. It's not to contain Redlight, but for her body's safety. With her immune system down, she's more vulnerable than ever."

Silence was his reply. Ragland turned around to see hooded man standing inside the air-tight clear plastic of the quarantine tent.

"There's no cure for Redlight," Alex said this quietly as he gazed down at the young woman rigged with cords and wires.

"The other patients came out fine, Alex. The survivors are proof of that," Ragland replied.

"They weren't the target." Silver eyes looked up from beneath the hood. "Dana was purposely infected with a special strain. Besides, the survivors weren't cured by medical means. Redlight just… stopped and everything else is just natural reaction," Alex told the doctor before gazing back at his sister. He grimaced.

"Ragland, Greene wouldn't have existed nor would the Hope incident happened if Redlight just gave up. And that was the time when it had no head, no variables to influence the results." Alex started pacing back and forth then stopped to stare at the doctor. "And no one got simply cured," he pointed out. "Redlight leaves marks," he told grimly.

"Yet the survivors showed no sign of major mutation."

"Despite that, small outbreaks still happen. Hope was wiped out, no survivors. Somehow they were carriers that laid low—"

Ragland cut in. "The survivors couldn't be carriers. Symptoms would show."

Alex stared at him hard. "Other diseases showed no symptoms until the very last moment. Even with all the blood tests, you can't guarantee a positive result if the body is freed from the parasites."

"Only time does," the doctor muttered. Ragland sighed at this.

"Something's different with this outbreak," Alex said. "Too many factors, too many living. I doubt Redlight just wilted away in their bodies."

Ragland stared at the living virus before looking at the young woman on the bed. "Is she the proof?"

"She hasn't woken up!" Alex snapped. "What else is there? It sits in her, doing—" he grinded his teeth. "Something is controlling the variables. For all I know, the survivors are just there to carry out future outbreaks."

"But it would've been wiped out if Redlight just stopped in their body, Alex," Ragland repeated. "You've said it yourself."

Alex Mercer sighed and rubbed his face. "Nothing about Redlight makes sense, Ragland. Five decades of studies and yet it still throws surprises." He grunted in frustration. "All I know is that there's definitely something controlling it."

"I still don't—"

"Dana, should have died by now," Alex told the doctor sharply. "Her body is doing nothing, Redlight should have free access to do whatever it wanted. To finish what it is doing to her! Except it isn't!"

"She's a medical anomaly, Alex. Rare but they happen."

"Greene was a medical anomaly before she became what she was!" Alex snarled and Ragland winced.

"If you're saying what I think you're saying," Ragland told him slowly. "We still don't know the incubation period for her to become—"

"Two years," Alex answered curtly. "Two years for Greene to become what she was. But even then she showed sign of being a perfect host before. Her anomaly was the first sign."

"So technically we still have time before it happens," Ragland said as he stared at the living virus.

Alex just bristled, red and black tendrils rippling before they settled back into immaculate black leather.

Ragland began to hold his breath.

"You're right," Alex said then tugged his hood in frustration. "But we still need a cure. If Dana's body is not going to wipe Redlight out for her, then…" he hesitated, his breathing shuddering at the thought.

"She's not dying, Alex. Not yet."

"As she sits here, she's being risked of earning how many dozens of infection before Redlight finishes what it does! It's churning, replicating! Slowly eating her before the mutation happens!" Alex shouted. "All the current cures aren't working! You've said it yourself," he repeated Ragland's words.

"Alex, calm down," Ragland said gently as the living virus breathed heavily, black and red tendrils shivering uncontrollably out of his anger.

"I…" he hesitated before looking at his pale hands then at the comatose woman. Beneath those white blankets and paper-thin cover, her body were arrayed with incisions. Threads that spoke she was opened up plenty of time, gone through surgeries more than her body could recover. All to get samples, all to fight the virus. All along her spine, her wrists, her elbows even her feet were spotted with how many injection marks, dotting her pale skin enough that her blood vessels were bruised red. Just like Greene... just like Greene.

His fists tightened. "I'm the virus. I can control my virus," he said, as if assuring himself.

And yet, he slaughtered many, consume many, feeling the addictive rush of… infecting. Was he really controlling? He wasn't entirely hunting for just truth and his vengeance. They were just convenient excuses to go along when he knew no better.

In the end, part of him was fascinated yet horrified at the feelings that brought with consuming. He knew he was following an instinct alien and entirely inhuman back then, and he used this as excuse to rage at those who he thought were guilty at making him what he is. To hunt, to infect was a blurry line for his young naïve self.

It still wasn't… normal. He closed his eyes, remembering the flash of Dana's horrified face and then on that day when she was forcefully taken.

He looked up from his deep thoughts. "Can you use my virus to make a cure out of it?"

Ragland narrowed his eyes. "As a means to destroy Redlight and perhaps mutate her immune system to be stronger…"

They were walking on ice, right now. Blacklight was a weapon of war. That was the reason it was made for, not as a cure for cancer, but war. Alex repeated to himself, he is above that. He was more than just a creature of design, a creature of how many lifespans of memories stolen. He could control his virus, he told himself. He could do things with it, so why not as a cure?

Yet the super soldiers still exist because of a three-weeks old batch, if he was such a master control of his virus.

_They're dying anyway_, Alex thought. Slowly, but they're dying. Short lifespans for faster regeneration.

He was surprised the super-soldiers weren't burnt out from his virus. But like Ragland said, only time would show the symptoms.

They still weren't dying fast enough, Alex thought sourly at the regeneration part.

Not to mention, certain Redlight strains could hurt him. The parasite was proof enough. And a cure version of his virus is going to go against that?

But he didn't suffer from consuming Greene, whose body churned how many strains of Redlight. One or two of them should hurt him when he consumed, but it didn't. It was proof that his virus was stronger. But Dana had a special strain in her, and a cure version of his virus cannot afford to be weaker than the original's. Blacklight's deadliest traits, could be use to combat Redlight. Though its traits are not something desired in a cure as it has too many risks.

"I do not know much how Blacklight technically functions besides theories," Ragland began. "Alex, we're making a cure out of a virus with 99.99% mortality rate," The doctor said, doubtful.

He's the virus. He can control it… he can lower its mortality rate. _I have to._

"You've cured me from a cancer that's supposed to kill me, Ragland," Alex pointed out. "I know you can do it for Dana as well." _Except she's more… fragile than you_. He crossed his eyebrows at the thought of this.

Ironic, for a virus to put faith in a GenTek scientist. An ex-GenTek scientist, Alex corrected himself before marching towards the medical tools within the metal trolley. Pulling out the drawer, he peeled the air-sealed plastic and began to set up the needle. It was all natural to him, setting up the needle, as if he has done it a million time before.

Without bothering to find his artery or pulling his sleeves, he just stabbed into himself and pulled out the vile, inky blackness of his biomass.

"Extract the virus, replicate in whatever petri dish." He knew he used the term wrong. Petri dishes were for bacteria, not viruses. But he didn't care. "Do what you have to do to make a cure out of it," Alex said when he placed the filled needle on the metal tray, not looking at the doctor. "Don't make me regret this, Ragland," he told the doctor sternly, blue eyes glaring briefly before returning his diligent gaze on his sister.

He felt like he was breaking every promises for doing this. But if Dana's survival depended on that… then he would gladly do it even with the risks.

Because nothing scared Alex more than losing his baby sister. Not again. What would he do without her?

* * *

_Three months later_

"Why has the government kept this information from the public—" the reporter voiced.

"Shut the TV, Elise," grumbled the man lounging on the couch.

"But it's talking about the outbreak," a six year old girl said.

"Just shut the TV."

"Everyone is talking about it, dad."

"You're too young to take interest in something this serious," the man shot back, folding the newspaper he had in his hands.

"But there's nothing to watch!" the girl whined loudly.

"It's eleven o'clock, way past your bedtime," he told her flatly. "Good kids like you should've been in bed before."

"But it's the weekends tomorrow!"

"So?" He gave her a stern glare.

Elise relented under his stare before brightening up. "Tuck me in!" She raised both of her arms up in expectation.

"No."

"Oh c'mon!"

The man exhaled as he sat up on the couch, "How about I tuck you into the garage's freezer." He grinned maliciously. "With all the dead bodies Hank told you about."

The girl just gave him a flat glare. "Not funny, dad. He made it up, he said so."

"You're right," he gave in and stood up, walking over her before heaving her up into his arms. He purposely turned away from her bedroom's door and towards the garage's, earning a loud, "Dad!"

He snickered before correcting his path back.

"How come you don't bother playing sports with the other parents?" murmured the little girl when she leaned her head against his shoulder. "You love football."

"I do," he replied softly. "But I get way too competitive and when I do… bones break," he finished weakly.

"You?" She pulled up and stared at him. "I don't think you can break any bones, dad."

"Oh. Why's that?" he asked, opening the door to her room wise. He didn't turn on the light, just relied on the corridor's warm own light behind his back. Dark as it was, he knew her room was creamy white with green vines lacing across the walls. Toys of different kinds scattered in the corner, around the wooden chest that usually housed them. She had her own desk and drawers facing another wall. Her closet by the exit door behind him and her bed was against the wall, in front of the window.

"Jenkin said you're too lanky. The other dads are big, you're skinny!" she giggled.

Jenkin… He gritted his teeth together, keeping his face impassive at his girl, albeit poorly, as he put her on her bed, pulling the blankets cover back while at it.

"You're too nice and goofy to break anyone's bones," she continued.

He hummed silently at that before putting covers back onto her.

"Other moms say you dressed weird or adorable," she said, then noticed her dad's green eyes glistening in the dark. "What?" she perked.

"You are very nosy, do you know that?" he told her and poked her nose. "Normal girls pay attention to their dolls or trucks or whatever toys they have these days. You," he said, pointing at his mischievous girl. "listen and play silly little girl in front of everyone just to scheme the ending of the world."

"I do not!" the girl crossed her arms. "I'd rather rule the world than end it."

"For what?" she heard the incredulous tone in her father's voice.

"To get all the cupcakes I want, duh!"

"Well Miss Elise," he said, using his light berated tone. "You won't get your cupcake tomorrow if you don't shut your eyes right now and go to sleep!"

She immediately shut her eyes at that and pretended to sleep. He smirked before kissing her forehead.

"Goodnight, Elise," he murmured before walking out her dark room, leaving the door slightly ajar for the corridor's light to spill in.

He switched off the main living room light before stacking neatly the neglected piles of papers with drawings on them onto the table. Grabbing the tossed magazine underneath the coffee table as well the dirty socks, he began to go around the room, picking up and putting them back into their places… in the dark.

His green eyes narrowed, checking for any details that told of a messy home. There weren't any. Listening carefully, he heard the sound of fridge humming and soft breathing of two children in their rooms, adjacent to each other.

He blinked in the dark before making his way to his opened kitchen. Turning the hot tap water without bothering to open the cold, he began washing the dishes rigorously under scalding water.

The man paused before looking down at his feet… where a half-eaten metal bowl sat on the floor. With a furrow on his eyebrows, he picked it up. As if on cue, a black labrador burst out from the corridor, came running onto the kitchen's smooth wooden floor before noticing the glare of her owner with her half-eaten bowl gestured up for the world to see. She immediately ran out of the room, knowing she was in mighty trouble.

"Don't I feed you enough?" the man muttered before continuing his washing.

Dishes done and dried before being placed back, he wiped the table's surface three times, even the kitchen cabinet's handles… which led to him rigorously polishing all the house's doorknobs.

He had nothing to do at a night like this, and for good reason. He could afford to lose some shuteye for once.

Stopping his weekly sterilization, he went back to his couch to pick up his phone tucked in the corners. Upon looking up, his eyes went to the clock above the TV, noticing it was barely midnight.  
Way too early, he thought before laying down on the couch. He laid still for a while before curiosity got to him. Turning the TV back on with the lowest volume ever imagined, he listened to the news update on NYC's outbreak.

"Wrong," he muttered when the reporter spoke of the numbers of death, displaying New York's rivers that held how many barges that once burn infected bodies of NYC's citizens. "So wrong," he said softly. He lifted the remote, preparing to shut the TV, then stopped when they showed a blurry image of the so called dead terrorist that caused it all. Feature barely clear with that hood shading him, not to mention poor quality image. "Wrong," he said again before shutting the TV completely.

A deep part of him stirred, eager to feel the outside's air instead of just laying there, waiting.  
It was strange for him, to feel so restless. Perhaps it was the outbreak. He sighed before his face hardened.

Three terrorist attacks on New York over the decade. There was the 9/11, then there was this biological one… and lastly that was really making people literally scream and protest right now even here, nuclear terrorism.

The end of the world has come and all that jazz. It would have come… if they truly lost Manhattan to the infected. It could have been worse. The whole world taken over instead of Manhattan.

Protest, protest, protest. We want answers! And all that at Washington, D.C. as at any major cities of other states.

Neighbors were talking, the school teachers were talking, the community was chatting, the internet thrumming; Facebook, Bebo, Blogspot… The Outbreak was on the tip of everyone's tongue.

And he played the smiling face, giving condolence when he could, saying few things, even so far adding the part he lost his mother in the outbreak as well lost contact of his siblings. Not like he was lying and all.

Except it grated on and on. It didn't help the old visions were clouding his sight literally red. More often than not, they stayed in the corner of his sight growing into his visions when he happened to be close at breaking that face he had so carefully woven through the years.

The world talking, chatting. The hivemind whispered, chattered and hissed. The world screamed. The hive screamed or was it the haunting sounds of Hope dying that had accompanied since his birth? And his visions got worse as they kept on talking. It was hard to keep smiling.

He had been reclusive for the past month. And annoying neighbours noted that.

Patrick Gordon was a nice human man who technically have no close friends and could easily disappear. Philip Greene, the runaway, the runner, lay beneath that, waiting for a crack in the face for him to just appear briefly.

He laid there, on the couch, relishing the fact there are no eyes to watch him slip. He had played this game. He was familiar with it in all his life, picking the right image that was so far from who he was. It shouldn't be that hard to continue at winning it. Except it was.

Was it because she's gone...

_'The time for waiting is over.'_

Well he didn't feel anything. He expected a part of him to die. To feel… hollow or something. Restless perhaps? More violent? No… he controlled his feelings too well. All without her help. She may have held him back when he was young. But for the past few years, it was all him that controlled himself.

"Fudge cakes," he grumbled before bursting into a soft laughter that shook his chest.

But she had never left. Like the visions, her whispers continue. Just out of sight, out of mind. She lived through her children.

The hivemind whispered. Someone was dreaming. Someone was hunting. And he was waiting.

"Telle mère, telle fille," he whispered and continued laughing.

_It will never end. You can't fight nature._

There was a sound of glass breaking down at the basement. He smiled at the expecting intruder. Thought he was just going to leave for his weekly late-night jogging. Sliding off the couch, he went downstairs quietly.

In the end, the thief ended up in his garage's freezer. Whole and fresh.

* * *

"Sir?" A woman's voice disturbed him from his thoughts. "Can you sign this form for me?"

He looked up, shaking his head then took the form from his secretary's hand. "Uh, sure," he murmured, giving a quick flick with the pen before handing it back. "Isn't it a bit late for you to be working, Jenny?" he asked her lightly before turning back to gazing outside the window.

Downtown Houston spread below his office, and like many metropolitan cities, it was noisy and full of bright lights from streetlamps, office buildings and cars. A change that he found drastic for the ten-years-ago lab rat who mostly lived under white luminescent lights for all his life.

"Oh, you know me," Jenny spoke, a bit flustered. "It's just that when it comes to deadlines, the boys prefer to hand it in right near the end when they," her voice turned tighter, "should've handed those in earlier, which gives me not ENOUGH time!" she hissed with her shaking hands throttling the paper in front of her. "To process them," she finished then paused awkwardly at his staring. "I'm sorry," she said weakly. "I've shouldn't have yelled."

"You're three months pregnant. It's understandable," he told her gently. "You should've taken your leave."

"And have paperwork to catch up on when I come back," she snorted. "No thanks." She shook her head as she neatly stacked the wrinkled papers into one neat pile.

"Jenny."

"The office has enough relax environment-"

"Jenny," he snapped in annoyance. "Go home," he added to the stilled woman. "I'll deal with the paperwork," he said, grabbing the piles and wrestling it off her stiff grip – an easy thing to do.

His secretary sighed before giving him a soft smile. "Thank you, sir," she said before slowly leaving his office under his gaze.

_Finally_, he thought with a shake and a roll of his eyes. He stood up over his window, mulling things over. Lately he'd been agitated by something. It wasn't his employees... or maybe it was considering they could be a bunch of monkeys when he turned his back on them.

Perhaps it was the old paranoia. He did run away after all. And he ran for a long time despite the whispering. Frankly, he was annoyed by his mother's simple thinking and just shut her voice out. To her, the world was screaming in pain and he heard it too. All his childhood... filled with noise of the world, visions of what Redlight wanted of the future, visions that invaded his sight of what a virus could be if technology fails to catch up on nature.

Hope chattered and mother whispered. He'd lived in a waking dream. And she... she must help them with the only way she knows, mothering. A virus mothering was something out of a nightmare. New York was proof of that.

Really, what she did made a mess. And he did not like messes. So he contained her endeavours, restricted the virus's movement, made the virus not waterborne. So Redlight wasn't able to cross the ocean surrounding it. He was better than she was when it came to that aspect of the virus. Plus, he found it amusing to see his 'siblings' struggling when put in water. Like a child fascinated by an ant drowning. He found it fun to toy against his mother, after all she was the one who taught him.

Then sweet silence came, silence that he fought hard to build in his mind. But there was a voice. A runner in making. A backup. Mother was clever after all.

He grimaced, pinching the bridge of his nose. Why was he rethinking the past? He was the final purpose. The cure for the humans when the time came where diseases ran rampant and uncurable despite all the technology they had.

He gave, what people would informally say, jack shit about that.

"Mister Gordon," a rough voice called out.

_Now who—_ He turned around, crossed. Next thing he knew, he was lying on broken glass, on another rooftop, adjacent to his building.

_...the hell?_

_This was going to be one hell of a stressful week_, he thought crossly as he slowly got up.

He stared in disgust at his broken glasses on the ground. He had to buy that since he'd worked hard to keep his virus inactive. Shape shifting a new pair would defeat the purpose. A hefty amount of active virus would give all the symptoms and heat Blackwatch needed to track with their annoying UAVs, and it kept his end of the virus cut off from the hivemind. Meaning mother couldn't track him as well as Blackwatch.

Granted, that meant no easy access to biomass, forcing him to shift his body cells so that he was able to survive with human food only. As well as having... organs: heart, kidneys, even a brain. And that means he barely had the mass he needed to deal with something violent, like say, his brother.

He exhaled heavily and turned around. Maybe it was one of those super soldiers with the ability to track him. Since New York, they were many deployments of them because a certain little youngster in their family couldn't keep his virus all to himself. He searched around for his assailant and looked up back to his office... now with a huge broken hole in the windows.

_The bills that are gonna come out of that…_

Not so surprisingly, it wasn't those bulky super soldiers. It was some hoody hobo standing in the hole. He would've sighed, but he was wondering what that bulky thing he was holding was. The answer came with a blur of white when it was thrown in a straight line.

He dodged quickly albeit too slow for his taste when it smashed into the concrete besides him with flying parts almost hit him._ A photocopy machine!_ he thought, shocked in his rage. Now that he was reminded of it, he was thrown down here when something hit him behind his back.

Glancing behind his back in his crouching, he noted there it was, a broken photocopy machine in the concrete. _Two photocopiers!_ He looked back up and glared.

"DO YOU KNOW HOW EXPENSIVE THOSE ARE!" he roared back at the black hooded figure

In response, the hooded man jumped down to the rooftop he was on, cracking the concrete. He heard the snap of thick coils whipped, and in major surprise at himself, he caught and grabbed the end of his little brother's arm. He gouged his fingers in and focused, his virus eagerly entering the streams and stiffening the arm. A satisfying reaction answered when his hooded assailant snarled in answer.

Dangnabbit, he didn't want to fight! Can't he see that?!

"Let us talk first," Pariah said between gritted teeth, voice barely in control as he glared at the menacing end of his family tree.

A violent pull, he let go and watched when the black whip was back to being normal arm. The hoody glared at him as the infected arm twitched violently... _not under his control_, Pariah thought smugly, satisfied but surprisingly feeling strained already.

"Look, if you have noticed!" he yelled at the dunce, "I. Haven't. Been. Infecting. The—"

He was grabbed and slammed back to his building. The world slowed around them as his virus rammed up his reaction time. While mid-air as papers and glass shards flying everywhere, he saw a raised fist was aiming down on him.

_Oh no you don't!_ He kicked, slamming the hoody into the ceiling as he fell and ungracefully rolled on the carpet. A familiar warmth of heat grew in his body. His body was waking up and his virus was back to full speed, chaining chemical reactions to give him the speed.

But no biomass... he wouldn't last as he'd grow tired. His cells needed to eat and his virus needed to replicate to keep up the pace of speed he needed right now. Right there and then he scolded on his stupid decision on laying low.

"Look, Zeus," he said, breathing heavily when he heard the heavy thump. The hoody got up from the debris, silver-blue eyes glaring and narrowed on him. "I HAVEN'T BEEN—"

Again, he was shoved back, against the concrete wall through how many tables, chairs and computers, all of them breaking and being thrown out of the way. But not without gouging his fingers into his younger brother's chest, spreading his virus to stiffen any further action from his assailant. He dug deeper into the chest and glared back at the icy blue eyes.

Frustration, rage, visions clouded red, cracking as red veins entered and grew, turning the office into some nightmarish viral landscape. He mentally pulled the virus.

"You broke two of my photocopiers. You wrecked my office. You ruined my glasses," he snarled as black biomass spilled onto his fingers at his mental pull, wrapping around his wrist, assimilating into him.

Pariah was stealing biomass. "I'm going to screw your body, brother," he snapped, then pushed violently, slamming the body and leaving a small crater into the floor.

_Bills, bills, bills._ He paced around the crater as the body stiffly got up. He noted in satisfaction that his virus was keeping Zeus from functioning well. Also he might have broken a pipeline.

_I need to calm down._

Rage was not good, rage meant he would literally let his... virus grow out of control, kill everything it makes contact with.

_'Do not destroy.'_

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and opened to see bare normal ceilings again. Crouching before the struggling body, he stared at Zeus. "Zeus!" he snapped in the tone that he saved for his worst employee. "I'll be frank. You're either dumber than I thought —" He saw a blur of quick movements but he willed his virus, stiffening the raised arm. Hatefully, Zeus stared at him.

"After all I did to New York. Helped you against Redlight!" he shouted, feeling himself more strain as Zeus fought against his virus. Holy shi-biscuit! He mentally corrected, holding back from grinding his teeth in the effort on containing Zeus. Don't show weakness. "And your sister!" Pariah added. "No, _our_ sister."

Because, frankly, mother would've killed him if he was discriminating against his sibling. She'd only softly chided when he killed the infected monkeys during his experiments when he was a child.

"Leave Dana out of this!" a snarl came and Pariah was again lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, wondering how could someone be that fast.

Note, mentioning sister seems to give him an edge against his virus. Because – Pariah rolled out of the way when the big heavy blade came down.

"She wouldn't have survived at all–" he jumped back as claws slashed before him in silver glint from the city lights. "Medical attention!" he added as black coiled whip came out from black-red blurs of tendrils reweaving. The barbs on the whip's end glistened in the dark before... ruining another photocopier. "Or your last ditch attempt—" The blade slashed the air above him as he bent back. While leaning back, Pariah kicked him with his left and right into Zeus's own open chest, sending his brother back... into countless filing cabinets.

Those haven't been digitalized yet, he grimaced._ Jenny is going to kill me._

"What was I saying?" Pariah wondered aloud to the air as he panted. "Oh yeah. She wouldn't have survived without my help. Frankly Zeus, you're sloppy and inexperienced when it comes to that kind of detail work."

A filing cabinet hit him in the face. Pariah growled deeply when he got back up. "Brother, you need anger management class!"

Oh, Zeus was pissing him off. He turned but froze when he noticed why the hoody was staring passed him, as unarmed as a viral abomination could get.

"Jenny," Pariah blurted at the woman standing... staring at the wreckage.

"Sir?"

_Fuck_, he thought uncharacteristically. Slowly he walked up but the woman stepped back and stared at him with that big doe eyes... demanding explanation. He stopped walking. He really needed her to leave so that he could clean up the mess. He looked guiltily around him as he shoved his hands into his pocket under her stare, from her mind.

With the state of this office, my reputation is going to get ruined anyway. He grumbled.

"Patrick," Jenny repeated... using his chosen name.

"I decided to renovate," he blurted.

She stared at the wreckage. "And him?" she turned to the black hoody who was stunned, fixated in place.

"Uh... " he droned, groping for an excuse.

"I'm his brother," a quiet gravelly voice came from the hoody, which Pariah that hoods look ridiculous in an office background even when dark. "I'm helping him out."

"By destroying?" her voice starting to turned small... scared.

"Jenny," Pariah said gently. "Why don't you go home like I said earlier," he suggested.

She stared at him.

"Okay?" he looked at her while inside he was begging her to leave. "Just forget what you've seen. Okay?"

He'd make sure of that later. His secretary just nodded slowly then turned around; pressing the elevator button then disappeared behind the door.

She's probably running for the hills. He grimaced at his thought and turned. No presence of the hoody. Wisely, Zeus had left. Pariah could sense him already leaving downtown... with a mess for him to clean up.

This is going to be one hell of a stressful month... Pariah gave a snarl and kicked a neglecting computer on the floor.

* * *

"Sir?" a male voice asked as he scribbled down his signature on the cheques.

"What?" he grunted sullenly. He was in a foul mood, and it's not just because of the state of his ruined office. Despite knowing he was in his bad mood, there was still a questioning look on his employee's face.

"Why is there a hole in your window?"

_Really? That's what you're here to ask me. What happened to my window? Not what the hell happened to the office or why the toilet downstairs is busted as well as the kitchen sink's tap. Or where's Jenny?_ He slapped his face and rubbed it slowly. "The photocopier was being... difficult."

Logic. Photocopier, hole in the window, everyone was going to think he flipped and threw it out... somehow.

Rick, his daring employee full of questions, wisely backed out of his office.

Well, at least he could take advantage on the fact that his employees are handing in their projects before the deadline. Would save Jenny a lot of trouble... but it's not like she's here to appreciate that now.

His office phone rang and he promptly picked up. "Hello, Patrick Gordon speaking," he said flatly into the phone. He was not in the mood to be cheerful or be bothered to make himself feel like it.

"Uh… sir? It's me, Robert." A couple of coughs followed. "I'm a bit sick today."

He raised his eyebrow, fighting the urge to say, _oh really_. His employees literally couldn't be sick. Because everyone single one of them had shaken his hand, resulting in having his virus working subtly in their bodies. He improved their behaviour. Seratonin regulation was a reward for job's done well. Little hormone tweaks to stave off depression, made even their darkest times bearable and… this was the important part… his virus in their bodies supercharged their immune systems. They were pretty much incapable of catching most illness.

His useful and happy little worker bees.

Technically, it wasn't like he was overriding their personalities or brainwashing them.

Much.

It was also his virus that made the long, miserable climb up the corporate ladder bearable.

He ground his teeth together and exhaled.

"It's alright. Take the day off. The office is in… poor condition right now," he told the caller.

"Thank you, sir." He heard the sigh of relief.

"I expect for you to be back in two days time. No excuses," he said flatly and ended the call.

Rubbing his forehead, he pulled out his cellphone and sifted through his contacts. It took three phone rings, and finally she picked up.

"Hello, Jess-" he began.

"Who is this?" A querulous voice asked suspiciously.

"It's Patrick Gordon. Your neighbour," he replied.

"Oh Patrick!" the old woman chirped.

He made a face at the sudden outburst. He sighed and continued on. "I need a big favour. Can you watch my kids for a week or two?"

"Take care of your children, hmm?"

"Yes, there's plenty of food in the pantry and they can mostly watch themselves, but I really just would love it if you could watch them," he continued.

The older woman's voice cooed, "That's okay dear. I love them having around. I almost feel like they're my own grandchildren."

_Well, that's mostly my fault_, he thought to himself. _Not that you'd mind, since you really don't have any of your own._

"Thank you. Can you pick them up today?"

"Sure, I can. They have to take the bus with me though."

"It'll be good exercise for them." He gave a fake, but convincing laugh. "Also, I have to leave Sasquatch as well. They wouldn't know what to do without her."

But as much as his children loved the dog, the more important reason was because Sasquatch knew how to protect them.

"Your dog is going to have to sleep outside the house," she added at that, slightly less friendly.

Gordon made a mental note to himself to make sure she started loving Sasquatch as well. May as well have her like the whole package.

"Yes, I know that. Sasquatch doesn't mind. She's a very frisky dog, but knows how to behave," he replied lightly before slowly pacing back and forth. "So it's sorted then?"

"It will be just fine, Patrick," the old woman said slyly. "Do you mind if I ask where you're going? What's the emergency?"

He paused for a long moment, trying to decide what he could actually tell her. "I'm going to see some of my family."

"The ones you lost contact with in the outbreak. Oh, I hope they are alright!"

She remembered that much at least. He blinked at that. Jess was an eighty-year-old widow who lived alone in a big house. Her mind was going and though he gave her the occasional nudge to keep her going, he was often surprised at how spry she could be at times without his intervention.

"I hope so too." He smiled. _Not._ "Well, I've got to go."

"Have a nice day, Patrick," she replied cheerfully and hung up the phone.

So polite, even go so far using his full name. Not like Jenkin. He bared his teeth when reminded the cheerful 'Pat!' coming out of that asshole's mouth.

He put his phone into his pocket before walking up to his desk, snatching his suit's jacket. Walking out of the ruined office, he walked to the elevators, passing Rick's desk.

"Rick!" he called out the spaced-out employee.

"Yeah!" Rick fumbled in surprise.

"You're in charge for a week or two!" he snapped without stopping his stride.

"You want me to manage the repairs though!" Rick called back, confused and alarmed.

"Consider this a chance to show me you can handle more responsibility!" he snapped back as the elevator's door is closing. "If you do well, we'll talk about that raise."

"But—"

The elevator doors fully shut, showing him his reflection in the shiny metal. A slight, pale blonde man wearing a bow tie with a pen poking out of his chest pocket. The most assuredly goofiest-wearing boss, as his daughter would say. He cursed the day he cured the girl completely of her leukaemia. Too late now. She already wormed in. Still, he tilted his head at his reflection; it was a very affective image, certainly far from the cold ruthless lab rat of eight years ago.

_Right._ He thought. _Change, get Sasquatch, drive to Jess, drop her off… leave the car?_ Considering Zeus's eagerness to destroy things, he decided to leave it.

The elevator door opened, and he marched through parking lot to his silver sedan. With a click of a button, he opened and slid into the car, turning on the engine on after closing the door after.

_What did Zeus want?_ He wondered. _To consume me?_

He knew what he was speculated to be. The purpose of all lifeforms. But what needs does he have to be one? _Why?_

He thought about it. The sister. As he sat now, waiting in Houston traffic, he could hear her dreaming… and whispering.

Zeus wanted to cure his sister. He wanted to undo whatever he did that made her condition worse. Oh Pariah knew. He heard her screams in the hive when something went_wrong_.

Like the other New Yorkers that were infected, he simply shut down Redlight within their body. His siblings, he played with and made some Hunters pull a suicide by dumping themselves into the river spontaneously. That was all. But her… why didn't it just die?

Mother lived through her children… her virus.

Perhaps when it reached a certain point of infection, the body had assimilated the virus so even when shut down, it would be ignored when the immune system came up. Or… she had a special strain.

So she was the backup runner. Zeus's little sister… if counting her age as an infected, not the years she lived.

"Clever," he murmured. At first, he thought it was just some random New Yorker, but no. It was Zeus's girl.

Because mother wanted her son to protect the family. The girl was the logical choice. From his brief delve in the hive, the fear and knowledge they had on the creature named Zeus spoke that he was protective of the girl. The slaughter and collapse of many hives that strayed into Zeus territory told much, as well the death of many Blackwatch soldiers.

He should kill her and Zeus. Those two already threatened his little charade as a human.

_'Do not destroy.'_

He tightened his grip on his wheel, slightly cracking the thick plastic. He would have to put a cover for that.

What then, if he didn't destroy? They would part ways. Zeus wouldn't want him near the girl for whatever irrational or rational reasons.

What need did he have for them to stay alive.

_'Do not destroy.'_

"It's my call," he whispered back before changing gears and shutting the engine.

Someone was dreaming. Someone was retching in pain. And he was hunting.

…and Sasquatch had eaten the thief's body, he thought when he saw the opened freezer's door.

* * *

A man, in a grey khaki and black turtleneck slammed down onto the cracked concrete. He looked viciously upset with how he was grinding his teeth while eyebrows creased together in concentration. He had been following the dents and cracks obviously left by footsteps with the force of a lumbering giant.

It helped using the tug in the hivemind.

He scratched his blonde hair beneath his black beany, feeling the slight rustle of his mackintosh jacket shifting a bit before settling.

Too long those pieces of biomass had been sitting in the garage's freezer. It's where he kept the extra weights of the many bodies he consumed. They'd been masquerading as dead meats meant for 'barbeque' as he had told Hank… when the boy almost microwaved one of them.

Pariah tilted his head and crouched down before the drops of black-red biomass. He reached out and they immediately snatched his fingers, disappearing into his sleeve and becoming a part of him.

It took him so much effort to make Zeus bleed. Zeus was a natural at fighting back foreign parasites, that he knew because he had to work extra hard to keep his virus he implanted during their fight—on top of Zeus's own immune system. Natural Blacklight and Artificial Blacklight adapting and counter-adapting at an insane rate. A war on the molecular level.

It pissed him off at the effort he had to put in, going so far overboard in trying to make Zeus bleed. Satisfyingly, one rooftop had a heap amount of biomass spilled atop, enough for three bodies. And he was picking up a lot of them. Considering there weren't any mess on the streets, he guessed Zeus would occasionally stop and bleed profusely, and if he was lucky, lose a few drops, but unfortunately not.

He really made sure of that.

Pariah stared at the sky before narrowing his eyes at the next mini-crater in the concrete.

He followed after, finding another few drops of biomass. Why was he so meticulous about it? Biomass left tracks for virus sensors. No way was he going to give Blackwatch a reason to come here.

Pariah trailed obsessively until he landed in a dark narrow alleyway. Slowly, he walked up to the body seating against the brick walls, putting more effort in keeping Zeus incapacitated whilst ignoring the trail of biomass dragged across the ground.

"Perhaps you shouldn't have ruined my office," he told to the hooded being breathing haggardly.

He saw teeth bared in a snarl beneath the hood.

"Hurts like hell, doesn't it?" Pariah said grimly and snatched the neck, pulling him up despite the protesting grip digging into his wrist. He kept his face impassive despite the considerable amount of insane mental effort to keep Zeus from sprouting his claws out. "Can't consume, can't change, can't do anything. Maybe, just maybe I can cure you of your miserable excuse of existence."

He glared at the silvery blue eyes narrowing down on him. "Think about it," he told him. "Live like a human. Forced to eat their food to survive as your body wars against yourself. I have a virus in you that can specifically impair you, and force you to adapt into that," he said brightly. "Every trick you learn, every skill, every ability all for nothing."

Zeus hissed as biomass spilled from his lips. _Shit_. Pariah kept his face from twitching as Zeus was pushing against his virus to the breaking point.

_'Do not destroy.'_

Pariah dropped him to the ground, leaving him coughing.

"You wanna talk now, brother?" Pariah said drily when he crouched down before him.

Zeus looked up, glaring at him cautiously. No claws, no blades, just the glare of icy blue eyes. _He bought it._ Pariah kept his face still at his triumph as Zeus finally spoke. "Why didn't you—"

"Consume your sorry piece of ass?" Pariah finished brightly, giving an impish smile. "It would be mercy. You have the screams of how many humans in you, and really, I don't want that. I was born with Hope wailing all around me when Blackwatch destroyed the town. I don't need more screaming in me."

Pariah stood up and backed away, giving the other spaces when Zeus slowly rose. "I could have digested you considering you're now a light enough meal," he continued thoughtfully. Just a little incentive for him to think twice. "But breaking down something like you would take more energy." He mused. "Truce?" he asked the young cautious Blacklight.

Zeus glared at him for a long time. "Truce," he said so quietly.

Pariah surged forward, gouging his fingers into the chest before pulling off a chunk of biomass, only to have numerous black-red biomass spilled and weaved back into Zeus body.

"What the hell!" Zeus snarled, stumbling back when Pariah was again on the other side of the alleyway.

"Just getting my virus back," Pariah replied lightly, tossing up and down what looked like a piece of black biomass. "And giving back what's yours." He smiled. His green eyes were almost amber-yellow now that the alley was truly dark.

Ripples of tendrils flickered across Zeus's body until they settled. The living virus blinked, then narrowed his eyes suspiciously back at him.

"See, I'm nice," Pariah told him. "Now can I expect the same from you?" He tilted his head in waiting.

"For now," his 'brother' murmured reluctantly.

Pariah stared at him for a long time at that and said suddenly, "Let's get some tacos." He promptly turned around and walked away.

"Wait," he heard confusion in the voice behind him. "What?"

"Tacos!" Pariah called back. "There's a good store nearby that makes those."

He heard the repeated, "what?" again as he walked out of the alleyway.

* * *

Alex Mercer couldn't believe he was standing in front of a mobile taco stall, holding a warm taco in his hand while listening to a radio rerun of some football game.

This… this was surreal. He stared at the doomsday bringer grumbling about how that particular football game made some _ass_ lose heaps amount of money.

Someone's phone rang, and he watched the blonde man in his late thirties pulled the phone out of his own pocket and pressed the call button.

"Dad!"

Alex heard the high-pitch voice of a little girl from the phone.

"Elise, what is it now?" Pariah smiled slightly before shooting a frown at Mercer's staring. Turning around, he walked off a few feet away, keeping his back facing him.

Even far, Alex could still hear the conversation clearly. An ability he took for granted when he listened for Blackwatch's activity from marine's radios.

"Hank is bullying me!"

"Give the phone to Hank then," Pariah told grimly. _"Heng Jian Li!"_ his tone immediately snapped into perfect Chinese. _"What did I tell you about hitting your sister!"_

Alex blinked at the flawless Mandarin.

_"She was bothering me with my homework!"_ whined a boy.

_"You ask her to stop, nicely. Not hit her."_

_"I did!"_

_"Elise just wants to play. Do you hit Sass when she bothers you too much?"_

_"No,"_ a sullen tone came from the phone.

_"Apologise to her and if she bothers you too much, tell her…"_ He could hear a grimace in Pariah's voice.

_"Tell her what?"_

_"No sweets of any kind for a week."_

"Elise, dad says he won't give you any sweets for a month!" the boy's voice switched to English.

"What!" a distant screech called from the phone.

"He also says he will lock you in the garage's freezer if you continue!"

"Heng Jian Li," Pariah snarled at that.

"Bye baba!" the phone went flat.

"That boy," Pariah seethed aloud. Now he had a mess at home to sort out.

Alex looked at him cautiously when he marched back and completely finished his tacos in one bite.

"You better have a very good reason for entering my life," Pariah snapped and pointed at him then noticed his staring. "What?"

"You took a father's place," Alex said, voicing his thought aloud. Why?

Hazel green eyes stared back at him for a long time before gazing at the stall owner busily cleaning up.

"Let's take a walk," he said and immediately left his question like that.

Alex held back a scowl. The whole thing was confusing. But he wanted answers and consuming was out of the question. Pariah was the natural Blacklight, everything in the genetic unlocked, all he needed was to learn what he could do like how a child would learn how to walk.

If strains of Redlight engineered could hurt him, as the parasite had taught him, Pariah's own virus definitely could even when he had adapted and evolved from the parasite experience. He was Blacklight perfected, and was a whole another level. Made it look like a breeze in making a parasite that could hurt him.

Consuming him won't be pleasant either nor would he go down easy...

Alex followed the blonde man, tossing his own barely eaten taco in the trash while feeling his own body's cells breaking down the bites he'd taken. Alex ignored the passer-bys brushing past him as he caught up with Pariah.

"I didn't take someone's place," Pariah said without turning to look at him as they walk. "I made it."

Alex shot him a look, surprised.

"Why consume an identity burdened with relationships and troubles? I didn't want that. I wanted my own," Pariah told him.

"Why a father?" Why this kind of identity? It was confusing for Alex. It did not fit the image of an escaped lab rat. Greene's child. Anyone of Pariah's contacts showed no sign of the virus amongst them. The reason why he could believe this man was Pariah because the hivemind was tugging at him as well as… Greene's whispering. The silent end of the hive.

"Because it was the farthest image of who I was," Pariah answered nonchalantly.

A Runner running from what he is. But why? Alex frowned at the thought. He did not know who he ate that gave him that thought.

"You're probably asking why I still haven't caused an outbreak." Pariah smirked at his confusion. "Then you should probably ask why do I need to cause an outbreak."

"The Reason," the words popped out of Alex's mouth.

Pariah's face darkened at those words. "The reason," he murmured and gazed at Houston's tall buildings around them. "A future where diseases run rampant. Really, I rather think the robots would rule the world," he said drily.

Alex gave him an accusing look.

"I don't care if the humans survive the future. In the end," he continued. "They will go extinct anyway, one way or another. Either from death, or sacrificing their humanity in order to adapt," Pariah told him as they stopped in waiting at the junction.

"You speak as if the future is definite."

Pariah shrugged, "Anyone can believe whatever they want. Me, I just don't think it would be that simple. One way another, there will be war. If we are the clue of what's to come, that is," he added the last part.

The walking green man went on, and they moved.

"Enough about me. Now it's your turn." Pariah glanced at him. "Why did you come?" he asked flatly.

Alex hesitated. Pariah already knew anyway… It meant he always been watching in the background, through the hivemind. Alex bristled at that. "Dana," he said stiffly. "My sister."

Pariah was quiet. "What's in it for me, hm?" the blonde man asked.

"Are you offering help?" Alex asked, cautious, gazing at him sharply, checking signs of trickery in what might be an offer.

"I might," the blonde man said quietly. "I can hear her," he added.

"What?"

"Her voice in the hive. She's dreaming. Or is it recalling?" Pariah tilted his head. "Sometimes she has pleasant dreams. Most of the time it's a nightmare, especially on that day mother took her."

"Ragland said she shown no activity—"

"She's not brain dead if that's what you mean. But yes, she's in deep slumber," Pariah said. "You know what she's going to be."

"She isn't yet. I still have time."

Pariah smiled. "Yes, you do have time. But do you really believe that?"

Alex hesitated, recalling the image of the soft yellow glow spreading through her body. "Her brain is _mostly_ untouched."

"It won't be soon," Pariah told him grimly.

"Then what would you do!?" Alex snapped.

"Kill her. End her misery," Pariah told him, stopping when he gazed at him sharply.

Alex bared his teeth at that thought. No, no that was not going to happen. She's not going to be another Greene. She wasn't… Greene. His nails digging into his palms as his fists tightened. The very hands that had crushed the mother of monsters.

"You're losing her. Let her go, Zeus. Any sane human wouldn't want to be the next mother of monsters," Pariah said gently.

"No."

Pariah stared at him sharply, at the sheer stubbornness staring back at him.

"I can't cure her. But you can." Alex stepped forward and stood straight before the blonde man. He gazed back at the green eyes, gauging his reaction.

"What makes you think I'm capable of that?" Pariah laughed, pissing him off to no end. "And why should I? What do I get in return?"

_'Family,'_ Greene whispered.

Alex scowled but noticed the distant look in the green eyes.

"You heard her," Alex said accusingly. "You can still hear her voice."

"I am her son, after all. Redlight's pride and joy, if her inaction was a way to show it," Pariah said bitterly. "Mother has been whispering to you. She told you what I can do." He stared at him, tilting his head. "Maybe not indirectly, but it's very subtle."

"Greene's dead, she can't do anything to me!" Alex snapped and began pacing. He felt restless, he felt like he want to punch something, mostly Pariah's face gazing at him right now.

"You're the one who consumed her. I say that's the opposite," Pariah replied flatly. "If I am the cure, what makes you really think I won't kill the girl? Or better yet, consume her."

Alex bared his teeth at that.

"Just think, Zeus. If she dies, what then?" Pariah said coldly. "Will you wander the Earth forever, burdened with the sins of others and yours? Be driven mad? Succumb to mother's whisper? Live on bitterly? Or just dump yourself into the centre of the Earth, killing yourself?"

_Dana…_ he gazed at the concrete at his feet.

"And if she survives, does she know what you are, who you are? Would you think she would accept you?" Pariah continued.

"I could say the same for your thing you have with your family," Alex said sharply.

"I plan to tell them when they are mature enough," Pariah answered calmly. "You though, I'm not sure you want to."

A monster, killer, terrorist. What kind of a brother was that? He grimaced. He didn't know what she thought of him, only a brother from the last words they spoke with each other. But a brother who was innocent, simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? He was none of that.

"Another thing you should be asking. If she survives, she would be hunted for the rest of her life. She is, after all, your sister. You wouldn't be able to stay with her if you want to give her a life."

A poor substitute of a brother.

_No._ He thought stubbornly.

"That's her call," Alex finally spoke. It's her call. Her choice. Even if it meant he would no longer be her brother in her eyes. He held back from grimacing. The fear what she would see him as… of losing her.

Pariah blinked at his answer. "I guess I have to come." He sighed.

"What?" Alex turned and stared at him sharply.

"You heard me, I will come."

Alex stared at him for a long, suspicious. "To cure her?"

"I might."

Alex bristled.

"If it's too late, then I have to do what I have to do," Pariah said flatly. "Since you can't do it," he added before walking away.

Pariah then paused and turned to him. "What city is she at?"

"Minnesota," Alex answered. So many times she moved, befuddling scientists as she went. But he was alright with it… for a bit. The good thing was that she was farthest from Maryland, where Blackwatch was based at. "Rochester," he added.

"We'll take the plane."

"What?"

"The plane, Zeus. It's faster. If the booking is not full of course."

Plane? Why a plane?! Planes meant he had to sit for the whole hours of flight, inside a narrow compartment, filled with people, doing nothing as time ticked by! Precious time that meant he might lose his sister if he doesnothing.

"You coming or not?!" Pariah called.

He wanted to say no and just immediately run off, but if he wanted to be assured that he was guaranteed a full cooperation…

Passport. Even if he shapeshifted to another person, he still needed a passport with his image on it. Technically, he did have a passport. A fake one for Dana and him. With his face everywhere even how blurry it was… he just… wasn't itching to try to test it even when changing some aspect of his face that made him just similar to Alex. J Mercer, but not a doppelganger.

* * *

What the actual fuck was he doing? He wanted hyperventilate right there and then.

Pariah handed him his ticket. He stiffly grabbed it.

"No luggage sir?" the stewardess spoke.

"No," Pariah answered. Just their body of extra weights.

Alex was paranoid at the thought of the plane crashing simply because of the ton of weight they carried. He didn't know how much mass Pariah carried but he highly doubt Pariah would let his guard down ever since the fight.

"Is he alright?" the stewardess spoke when she noticed how he looked.

"This is going to be his first time flying," Pariah smiled at the stewardess.

The stewardess gave a pitying smile. "Please be assured we will make sure your experience with us enjoyable."

What was wrong with him? He could handle being in a helicopter. He could handle being in a tank. But a plane? He was having a full-blown panic attack. Didn't help that Pariah was smiling at him like an asshole when he walked away.

"Where are you going?" Alex called out.

"To eat," he answered.

Again? He thought incredulously but followed after.

Pariah stopped by an elevator, pressing the button before going in. Alex walked in, gazing sharply at the camera in the corner, expecting a shudder from the elevator at the weights it had to carry.

The blonde man pressed the close button but the door jerked to a stop. A slim looking businesswoman stepped in. At the immediate action, the overload sign blinked on, making that annoying beeping when past its limit.

Pariah gave an act of staring in confusion. "It says twenty five but it's just us two," he told the woman. "I think one of us have to lose weight," he added, looking at her up and down.

That made her scowl and immediately set herself out of the elevator.

"Can't take a bloody joke," Pariah muttered as the door closed after her.

Wait. The elevator overloads for her but not them? Alex was pretty sure he weighed more than twenty people, but then he could glide. Well bees could fly despite their bodies but in the end they were aerodynamic. But him? He was worse. He breaks the law of aerodynamics.

Leave this as another nature's unnatural moment.

* * *

Alex breathed in deeply, keeping himself from breaking the armchair. It helped he was in first class seat as it was more spacious.

He told himself that even if the plane crashed, he would survived it. He survived a goddamn nuclear explosion. He can survive this. He could glide and survive from a terminal velocity fall, so he could abandon this plane if it became too much.

He blamed his distaste on small space and overcrowded area.

The turbulence shook the plane violently and Alex watched incredulously when Pariah pulled a beer bottle out from somewhere in his biomass, simply drinking through what should be a stressful flight when everyone else had been confiscated of their drinks and meals. He probably hid it when the stewardess came around.

A pursed came from the blonde man. "I don't know why I like the taste of alcohol," he drawled. "Must be the hobo in me," Pariah murmured. "But then people like foul-tasting coffee and tea," he added wryly.

"What are you doing?" Alex said accusingly.

"Keeping your mind off the turbulence."

The plane jerked violently and Alex gritted his teeth, fighting very hard not to crack plastic on the armchair.

"What a shitty weather!" Pariah suddenly burst uproariously, earning looks from other passengers.

Glaring, Alex gritted. "Well it's not working," he said, barely snarling. "I still don't understand why you bought tickets when-"

"First rule, Zeus," Pariah cut in, tone quiet and so low if it weren't for his sharp inhuman hearing picking it up. "Minimize any use of power. You don't know how bright things get in our body when we use our abilities. I'm very strict on that rule. Call me picky or a minimalist if you want for that," he said. "Second, that's asking for missing bodies and that attracts attention. Maybe not at us, but it still attracts attention."

Alex grimaced. "Blackwatch hasn't-"

"Noticed my missing presence." Pariah smiled. "It's a doppelganger," he added, recalling the autistic child at Vandenberg's facility. "There are many things you can do. Shapeshifting another is one of them." He knows other ways then, Alex noted this silently. Other ways of what the virus can do.

Pariah looked past him, at the window. "We're here," he said.

Alex followed his gazed. As they came out of the thick clouds, a lit city sprawled across the flatlands as a river curved through it. Rochester was quite a small city and its tall buildings weren't many, nor were as high as Manhattan's. It was the only distaste he has for the city as Alex had relied on Manhattan's forest of buildings to cut the line of sight.

Pariah just hummed at the sight before turning back to his drinking. The captain's announcement went on. They were about to land soon.

One step closer to Dana. But entirely her fate in the mercy of another… he grimaced. Pariah could control the virus in ways he couldn't even dream of. He was the most likeliest person in the world that could save Dana.

Person… Alex mused at that thought. Since when had Pariah become a person in his eyes?

* * *

Pariah wasn't lying. He was a fucking minimalist, choosing to take a taxi instead of… running there. Considering Rochester's lack of high buildings, he could understand. Nothing like the blurry black outlines of two men running and hopping in impossible speed and distance to catch attention of the public below.

So Alex silently seethed in impatient as he sat in the car with the glaring presence of its low roof sitting heavily on his mind.

"How's her condition?" Pariah cut into his foul mood.

"She's…" Alex perked up and grimaced at the question. "Her spine was damaged."

"No wonder she screamed," Pariah murmured.

"What?"

"I heard her scream in the hive when it happened," Pariah replied. "Tell me exactly how it happened."

"We made a cure," Alex began slowly, recalling that horrible day. At first, it seemed to be working, and then she almost died.

"Out of Redlight?"

"No."

"Good, because it would only be assimilated and just add to the problem," Pariah said.

"Out of Blacklight actually, we built a cure."

Pariah spun and stared at him for a long time. "You've made a cure out of a virus with ninety nine point nine nine mortality rate." He gazed at him with wide eyes. "You're barely learning how to control your own virus and you go and build a cure version of yours from a virus that doctors knows nothing about."

"You've underestimated Ragland," Alex snapped, feeling defensive. "He cured me from a parasite engineered from your mother's strains. I would've been dead if it weren't for that."

Pariah blinked. "A doctor who has no idea on the inner workings of our body and virus besides sketchy theories. Must be one heck of a radical doctor," he muttered, remembering his own team of scientists. Most were radical scientists speculating on what he is. He broke each one of their speculations though with his past charade.

"How do you know about Blacklight so much?" Alex said suspiciously. He hardly thought Redlight's Hive was smart enough to discern information concerning the technical details of Blacklight.

"Mother's Infected Carriers. Some of them managed to be Blackwatch who received briefings about the virus. Some of them were GenTek scientists. They were intelligent enough," he answered without looking at him. "Though I say, your own child was troublesome."

Alex looked at him confusing. He had no child. Blacklight kills when it mutates things. They were no survivors of Blacklight. What was he talking about? Heck, Blacklight only infects when he actively wants it.

"The one that refer itself as the Supreme Hunter, " Pariah continued when noticing his confusion. "How many times that audacious child almost walked into my part of the hivemind." He chuckled. Like a child afraid of the dark that creature was, it stayed away from the silent part of the hive, keeping him undiscovered.

"He's stupid, a brute and scaredy cat. I blame mother's part of birthing him that gave him those traits. You gave him intelligence," he added, pointing at Alex. "He resented you, Zeus. For rejecting him," the blonde man told with a smirk. "You are whatever it wished it is. A role model, a child wanting to grow up just like its father."

"Well that thing was slowly killing me," Alex growled. "It was eating off my back."

"Children can be back breaking. I guess it took that trait literally," Pariah joked, before falling into silence as the taxi finally approached the hospital.

They stepped out of the taxi, with Alex watching Pariah briefly touching the taxi guy's shoulder.

"Good man," Pariah said when he passed the cash.

Alex narrowed his eyes, his visions and hearing dulling as he concentrated. It was so subtle how Pariah worked. The white glow was barely there on the head. No way viral sensors would pick it up. If they couldn't pick up Infected Carriers, then they weren't capable of picking up Pariah's work.

"You're a lying bastard," Alex muttered when the taxi drove away. He'd been infecting and Alex wasn't surprised at all at that revelation.

Pariah raised an eyebrow in answer. "Despite whatever your belief you have concerning my origin. I wasn't conceived in the usual manner with the virus happens to hijack the process." Pariah slightly grimaced, recalling how the other Hope's children came to be. "I was born from only my mother's cells and the virus, nothing else, no partner at all," he replied and walked past him. "So no, technically I'm not a bastard. I'm literally Redlight's child."

War dialling, Alex recalled. Greene's own body would practically be mutated completely to make her capable of carrying what the virus is creating from her own DNA. It was literally destroying her body to make Pariah. No wonder she was weak when Randall took her child.

"What did you do to him?" Alex said suspiciously, remembering the taxi guy when he pulled back into the present.

"The taxi guy? Made him forget the conversation we had," Pariah answered before stepping into the hospital.

Alex scowled and grumbled darkly. Striding into reception, he noted Pariah was waiting by the very door that led to the restricted hallway for staffs and patients. He already knew where to go. The hivemind, he remembered. He could sense Dana's presence through the hivemind, just like how Alex could sense him through hivemind. Though during his hunting for him, Alex had to concentrate really hard on the tug as it was almost unnoticeable.

Even worse, he had doubted that tug when it pointed to the man Patrick Gordon. The blonde goofy-clothed man barely showed anything of who and what he was in Infected Vision. It was only in their brief fight that Pariah's body had started to glow furiously white. Alex would have to ask how Pariah did it. It might come in handy if he needed to hide from the Super Soldiers.

Alex pulled out the authentication card and waved it at the receptionist before sliding it into the scanner. Entering the code, he pulled the door left. "This way," he told the blonde man, and without waiting he strode towards the quarantine ward Dana was kept.

"This virus is a cancer, Ragland," he heard a woman say even before his approach to the ward. "It's a miracle she's still alive!"

"We can't just give up-"

"It's best she goes to Houston. They are better equipped in dealing with cancers and can at least learn something of this baffling disease."

"We all know that being first in the charts doesn't mean they're better equipped than us. Besides she has been moved through how many hospitals."

"She will need all the king's men and horses, but even then I doubt all the power in the world can cure her."

Alex walked into the room, interrupting the conversation. Ragland looked up before giving a questioning look at the blonde man behind him.

"Dr. Markel," the brunette woman greeted Alex. "A bit late to visit the patient?" she quirked an eyebrow.

"Actually," Alex grated. "It's early."

She blinked and looked at the clock hanging on the wall, almost to four. "I'll be damned. I stayed overnight," she murmured before turning to the broad doctor behind her. "Ragland, I'm going to pack up. I still think the treatment is going nowhere," she told.

"Archer. It's too early to say that," Ragland spoke but grimaced when she shook her head and left.

"You should go," Alex told the doctor when noting the tired man rubbing his forehead. "I'll take it from here."

The doctor sighed. "Alright," he said, slowly getting up from his chair, leaving the room before glancing curiously at the new stranger by Alex's side. "You will have to introduce me this new friend of yours later, Alex," the doctor added before walking out of the room.

They listened carefully to the sound of receding footsteps, leaving only the beeping of the heart monitor, the pumping from the medical ventilator and the soft breathing belonging to a woman.

"Let's do this," Pariah said and approached the clear plastic of the quarantine section of the room.

He unzipped the entrance and entered the sterilization part where hazmats suits hung. Alex followed after, zipping the tent behind him. Pariah immediately unzipped the door that truly led into the patient room.

He walked in and went to grab an idle chair, dragging it closer to the bed before sitting down. Alex stood still as Pariah silently assessed, noting how the green eyes turned yellow briefly.

"She still can be saved," Pariah said, and Alex exhaled, relieved.

Pariah reached out to grab the pale still hand lying over the blanket, but the young Blacklight immediately snatched his hand before they could touch hers. Alex glared at him.

The blonde man just exhaled in exasperation before pulling his hands back. "What do you want me to do, hm?" he said accusingly and stared back at his sour glare. "It's easier for me to have direct contact on the girl."

"You can control your mother's virus," Alex growled.

Pariah blinked and leaned back into the chair. "And what? You think it's simple as that. If you so happen to know, mother's virus is not equipped to undo the damage or modification it has done to the body. Mine though, is."

"I don't want you infecting her with your own virus," Alex said stubbornly as he looked down on the blonde man.

"You're really making this unnecessarily difficult," Pariah pointed out. "Tell me, how we're going to do this then, hmm?" he raised an eyebrow in waiting, crossing his arms and tapping his foot on the floor.

Alex just glared back at the green eyes before giving a long gaze at his sister, all corded up. Pariah could control his mother's virus. And he, Alex, Blacklight came from Redlight, just synthesized and engineered that it became entirely new different strain. He was still a part of it, if anything that Greene had said, _I am your mother_, made sense that is.

To that extend… Pariah could control his virus, maybe him as well. If he used that as an advantage, that would mean he would know what Pariah was up to, or doing to Dana's body, if he act through him. After all, he could feel his virus working.

He would kill himself if he just let a killer walk in and do whatever he wanted to his sister's body without using all his powers to stop that from happening. Besides Pariah was Redlight's child, what if he made her a runner instead, another mother to continue his mother's will? Alex's face darkened at these thoughts. It wouldn't make sense because it didn't fit the current face Pariah had. But what if he was just playing him?

"Use my virus," Alex answered finally. "Through me," he added.

Pariah blinked then his face turned serious. "Alright." He sighed before giving him a glare. "But don't get in the way and don't struggle or we might permanently damage her." He stood up and gestured at the chair for Alex to sit. Alex did so and grimaced when he felt a hand grab his shoulder. "Know that your choice affects the chance of her recovering from the damage in her body, her spine especially," Pariah added sternly.

"You can give her her legs back?" Alex looked up at him.

"Yes, but since we're going your way," Pariah said drily, "the risk she won't recover from paralysis exist. So don't be difficult," he pointed as if speaking to a child, warning the boogeyman would come out of the closet if he doesn't behave.

It was certainly effective, considering Alex was keeping his anger in check.

"Grab her hand and place the other one on her neck," Pariah said as Alex feel the presence of a hand on his shoulder.

Gently, very gently, Alex put her hand onto his, feeling the slightly clammy skin of hers while he did. Dana. Alex almost trembled. Behind the calm cold visage, he was actually frightened. So frightened. What ifs ran through his thoughts, of all things that could go wrong. The worst of them was that he'd done everything in his power, and still fail. That thought frightened him. The cure version of his virus fucked her up so bad… what if his own original just makes it worse? Shit, Alex felts the coils in him tightening. A squeeze on his shoulder and he looked up from his thoughts.

Pariah leaned forward and placed his other hand on her torso, completing the circle.

"I'm not going to infect her," Pariah said at his glaring. "You can be assured of that. Besides, your virus, mine as well as mother's is pushing a bit," he told him flatly. "There's nothing more overkill than that," he muttered then shut his eyes.

Alex breathed as his eyes switched to infected vision. The bright yellow glow shone so brightly, combined with the pale white of his own version of virus clinging to her back.

"By the power vested by me, I cure you," Pariah's voice cut into his vision.

Alex made a face and gave a hard unamused glare at Pariah. The blonde man just grinned back.

"Lighten up," Pariah drawled before shutting his eyes again.

Alex felt it immediately, the pull. Bright furious white splashed from his hands and into Dana's when he felt the tiny bit of him slid away. It clashed against the yellow, turning its lazy pacing into bustling molecular war.

_'You'll kill her!'_ Alex snapped.

_'Quiet!'_ Pariah snarled and slammed him back to the most alien senses of mental impressions and tugs, pulling his mind into another awareness that he knew was always part of him yet so entirely strange. The viral instinct.

* * *

The brain. The important part was the brain. He had to get there first then work his way downward. If Redlight damaged it, well he could undo the damage, he just wasn't sure the girl will be… well, the same girl even with same brain structure and DNA. It didn't change the fact it's a recreation of her if he did undo the damage on her brain. Her memories would still be gone, only scrambled versions of it would be left.

Hence the brain was the most important and best chance to minimize any chance of infection. He was certainly surprised at the onslaught from his mother's virus. Pariah just grinned. This was a game he was so familiar with and enjoyed ever since he was young.

Zeus's Blacklight was certainly different. It was like… a version of his virus but hasn't grown to its full potential. It was quite a fast learner when it had to do something it needed to do. What it could do would certainly be enough.

He noted the girl's body was too damaged, he shouldn't sacrifice more of her cells just to self-terminate Redlight. It'll still would leave the problem of undoing damage.

He also noticed the cleverness of his mother's virus, how it infected Zeus's virus and its cure version, changed them while Blacklight killed it through making the virus entirely something else, something it couldn't assimilate back. The cure version just ended up rampaging after the change. This was the only thing Redlight could do in defence. Change.

But with Blacklight, it changed so much something entirely new came out of it. Not destroy. Not change. But create. And sometime the girl's own cells became the coliseum that contained the fight.

He took advantage of that. He went and snatched the new version of the virus, pushing it against its own very mother, and completely copied its mother's traits. It assimilated the rampaging cure version of Blacklight,changed its behaviour. But unlike its mother, what it assimilated couldn't be changed back for Redlight's use… that immunity came from Blacklight. It was a better version of its mother. The new child pushed back, replicating when needed to, mutated the girl's own cells to be stronger. Pariah's grin widened in glee.

It was so complex and beautiful. It was everywhere. It was enough to fix the damage. Heal. Regenerate. Make her body strong enough to flush the rest of the Redlight strain that was too weak.

Pariah smiled, satisfied. Using his eyes once he pulled out, the white glow with a pink outline of a woman laid in front of him, her head mostly untouched and then the glow dimmed as he shut the virus down into inaction. His vision focused and colors enter back and his hand slid from the shoulder. His hearing tuned into the beeping of the heart monitor. Its fast pace beeps slowing down into a steady rhythm.

A soft exhale came out the girl's mouth as if knowing the battle was finally over.

"She's going to be fine, Zeus," Pariah told the hooded man seated by his side.

"We'll see," his brother murmured.

* * *

**Chapter Two: She Rises**

* * *

And Dana woke up then rule the world.

"Well that escalated quickly," Pariah said before noticing the glare coming from Zeus. "It was an honest oopsie!"  
**  
**

* * *

A/N: I'm obviously kidding. Ignore the last part of She Rises. Also, Pariah's horrid jokes shall never stop, nor does mine. Creepy bastard.


	3. She Rises

A/N: Thank Scriv, because some of the ideas were improved or given by him. And Coin, I love your comments and I love your patience, because dammit, how the hell did you swallow all those errors!

* * *

**Chapter Two: She Rises**

* * *

Love or attachment did not come naturally, specifically for another that wasn't family. He did not come to love his children in a snap.

He supposed that his life in captivity as a lab rat had marked him emotionally impaired; after all, he blamed his treatments there that brought him to be separate from his mother mentally, therefore he was much more independent from the hive. He questioned like the scientists, he didn't accept like Blackwatch, but he loved his mother like how she loved her children… family, and he was inhumanly patient despite all they put him through.

Undoubtedly, the last trait was what made him capable of learning to understand humans… despite his distaste on the species.

But that was the thing, he only loved family and only the family. It came natural to him despite his way of showing his love. Links, connection, whole, he was born with them. The moment he breathed, the moment he entered the world, he was never alone, he was a part of family. Family never hurt him. Family never abandoned him. Family loved him, and he loved the links and connection. Another son that only loved… as he should've been, except his captivity marked his psyche.

How family loved, how he loved was different from how humans loved another. He noticed how in family, there was no love like the ones human have for their life partners, or friends. Even the similar family love the humans have with their children or siblings wasn't the same.

In family there was no love him or her, nor love you or them, not even love this individual or that separate being. No lust, no romantic attraction, but attachment though… there was only love us, love family. Us. We. Links, connection, whole. It was natural, something part of him, something easy to do even though mental scars held him back. But to feel, to love something entirely not family…

His inability to feel for another that had no links or connection came from two major factors, his captivity, and his inhuman nature. He already had problems with being intimate, committed, and even being passionate to the hive, to his family. And he was going to try just to understand humans?

Curiosity. It always began with curiosity.

Another experiment. He wanted to know, he wanted to understand. His mother loved the humans and he wanted to find the reason why, his own reasons and not the hive's. His current life, in a way, began from that. A way to see if he could emulate the feelings the hive gave without needing to infect, at the same time emulate the feelings human have for one another.

He tried the latter once. Like how that time he stole a fiancé's place, his girlfriend none the wiser when she kissed his lips as her real lover laid unconscious. The next, a child as the mother crooned over him while he silently wondered was this how it felt to be loved by a human mother. He even became a sister to an annoying brat, just to see the fuss about sibling squabbles as none existed in the hive. He had nothing to do, he became anyone that struck his curiosity. It didn't last as boredom would follow after.

None felt natural, except for being a homeless wanderer. Mostly, he kept his distance.

So he made… an identity for himself, to make him… human, not a doppelganger. But something had to be done about this feeling… problem. Patrick Gordon could not exist for a long time. Patrick Gordon could not be human if he didn't feel the humane feelings. He may be a great imitator, but he would grow bored.

He needed something strong, something like the links to keep him going or hold him back from breaking that image. But to establish links was to defeat the purpose of making himself man. So something like the links and love was the answer. But he was incapable of it! Incapable to feel for himself and so he used the memories he stole, imitate the feelings he found in them. Even then it wasn't the same… it wasn't his.

It came from someone else.

Take Sasquatch, he did not save her because he loved her. He saved her because her owner loved her. In the end, he came to love her in his own way and that was easy because now, she was connected.

But then… that didn't really come from him, but more from natural reaction that was part of him considering she has become family.

He learned from this that he could only love family, only them, and only love _like_ family. He didn't know how his mother does it, loving humans with the way they are, but then she sees them as children, nothing else. Not like humans who loved another with different levels and combinations of intimacy, passion, commitment and for many, many reasons that's to do with their identities. Humans felt different type of bonds with each other. Strange. In the hive, there was only one type. One strong, tight bond.

Since it was his inhuman nature that got in the way, he had to change his nature. He had to switch something in him biologically. His virus made him capable of controlling everything in the biology, including the release of hormones and the chemicals. He just needed to figure out how his body worked.

Cue a moment of his life where he went through intense mood swings. Intense happiness, anger, moderate sadness, depression. He was some crazy hobo guy in the street who must had taken drugs of a new kind. But all of the feelings were called, they weren't natural reactions, they were voluntary. Controlled.

And then he pressed the right switch, and hopefully he thought it was love or maybe it was a different kind of obsession? It made him cared at least. It made him do stupid things. It made him feel… extremely excited. It freaked out his ex-wife when the first time they were officially a 'couple'.

But it wasn't enough. It was not what he was looking for. He wanted something long lasting. Something like the links. Attachment. That was it.

Cue more freaking out from his ex-wife at his sudden extreme clinging behaviour. But she was patient. Then everything reached the right clicks and level.

But was it love? It was controlled, voluntary.

But it was the closest he would ever feel the love that humans have for another.  
And then she left, and he learned that these humane feelings were a double edge blade.

So it was love.

And as quickly he fell in love, he fell out with a biological switch. When he was in love, he hypothesized he would feel regret at least when he reversed his switch. Because love was important, it was something to be cherished, it was… unique.

When he did reverse the switch, he felt… nothing. No regrets, and it was not from his control on keeping his mental pain down. The empty feeling was natural, familiar. Empty, that was what Philip Greene felt for humans. He remembered at least that it was something to regret. But remembering and feeling regret were two different things.

Right now, he cared for his children to know the gravity of his actions. To tell what he'd exactly done to make himself care for them, what he could do, it would hurt them because… could it be called love when it had to be switched on?

Philip Greene would never love humans. Wasn't capable at all, biologically and mentally. Philip Greene would only watch them out of interest. But Philip Greene was too curious. Patrick Gordon was the answer to that curiosity.

So was it love?

Was it?

Now Zeus though was interesting. Zeus had no links. Not even memories or feeling for another of his own. Zeus began with _nothing_.

He had nothing to influence him. No hive, no memories, just his own viral nature and the empty template of a psychopathic sentist. In the end, the former spoke louder. Nature, that spoke to be whole, love for family only, except no links.

So when he'd learn he had a sister who would be lost soon, he freaked out. If he wanted information, he would have consumed her. But he didn't, shows that there was something in him that cared. So Zeus instead unconsciously clung to what he thought was family.

That was Dana. The sister.

He had naturally reacted to care for another without links… no trouble at all in attaching himself to what he thought was family, when he should have because there were no links there to influence him, no memories for him to emulate what he felt to her, no attachments of any kind. Just his own nature.

In the end the inhuman nature to love family was there, just wrongly applied. But born with no links, so different circumstance.

Lost child. Lost child. Deaf and blind. No links, as the hive had whispered. Mother had thought it was a cruel existence for her child born to be like that, Zeus running to what he thought was family. She thought he was under an illusion, but that was not what appalled her; it was simply because illusions are easily broken.

So what happens when it breaks? It meant a truly lost child, who would only know to rage, to hunt, to kill, to destroy! She knew from experience from her own eldest of her living children, that having ties would not be enough to quell. So mother planned. Mother loved too much. She wanted to save him. So she made the illusion real, and Zeus establishing links to the hive was a bonus.

It was one of mother's wills to save her son. But… she did it the wrong way. Wrong, but logical and right… for her, that is.

"I did not save the girl for her sake," Pariah told Zeus as they stood on the hospital's rooftops. "I saved her for you. And for mother. That was something I can agree with."

Alex looked at him in surprise.

He understood the rage and anger, so much that there can only be destruction despite the links, or the memories, or both.

He had the hive to hold him back from the beginning. Zeus had dozens of memories he consumed and his own to grow the hold on his destructive nature.

But despite those ties alone, they weren't enough.

Nature triggered, and love or something close to it was though.

Something like Zeus was best to be watched or dead… or tied down. So he saved her for convenience, as well for mother, taking advantage of that particular viral nature, to be attached to family. Never say he was a son who never loved family when here he was, having done mother's will.

"You may call her a monster, but she was still a mother despite her… logic and state." Pariah pursed his lips, recalling his mother's wish as they stood beneath Minnesota's cloudy night sky. Green eyes distant, in thought as he told him, "She wanted to immortalize her, so even when the girl is gone and lost, she would stay forever, permanent in the hive, something a part of you once the links established. So I suppose mother is not really unhappy of being consumed by you, but it would be an inconvenience."

"The last thing Greene felt was fear."

"Of what, you?" Pariah chuckled. "She's our mother, Zeus. You wouldn't have existed if it weren't for her blood giving that template that was you."

Alex gave a huff at that.

Pariah just breathed in heavily, and blinked before continuing, "Mother feared everything would be for nothing. Anyone would have felt that during their last moment on Earth. She did not fear her end, just everything turning into oblivion." Pariah turned and smiled at him. "You were her end, but you were also something that would bring oblivion despite everything she'd done."

"I didn't. And I didn't stop the nuke for whatever reason you're thinking," Zeus growled.

Pariah sighed. "You still don't understand," he said the last part quietly. "Why did you save those humans, why did you save the girl?"

"None of the reasons you're thinking about."

Pariah glared at his uncooperativeness then shook his head. "Think whatever you want, Zeus. But whatever reasons you saved Manhattan also coincides with mother's and our nature." The viral nature.

In the end, family was sanity; family was motivation as love, for them, was attachment. Whether through links or illusionary bonds, they were the stronger ties, anchors they needed.

That was what Pariah learned. And what were they without them?

Destruction, another kind of stagnancy, or both.

Creatures designed by science to be whatever humans designed them to be… not by their own nature.

* * *

She stirred and she saw red. Her mouth opened to scream, but it came out as a heavy gasp. Meaningless sounds passed through her as she tried to move but found her bones so heavy, her flesh pressed and weighing down on her.

She cried silently, wanting to squirm, wanting to run, except some monstrous hold was around her, keeping her there.

"Dana! Hey! Hey!"

Blue eyes. Blue. Worried. Eyes.

"It's okay, it's okay. Everything will be alright." Warmth surrounded her and she shivered then cried more into the gentle hold, words passing out of her mouth sluggishly.

"It's okay," her brother's voice murmured into her ear. "I'm here now. I'm here."

Nothing came out of her mouth, instead she ran into the welcoming warm blackness that held her.

* * *

Patrick quickly pressed his fingers against Archer's neck. Blood had spilled from the back of her head, and he grimaced before looking at the slight crack in the wall behind her. Thankfully, the woman was unconscious and wasn't thrown through the quarantine tent. It would've made a mess if she was. He could make her think that she had tripped and fell.

"Not Ragland, he's fine," Alex's voice cut in when he turned to the male doctor. "He knows."

Patrick just glared at the male doctor before walking up to the bed. Zeus held the girl in his arm and murmured comforted words as she silently wept. Her shoulder shook as she hid and curled in his hold.

"Tell me exactly what happened?" he asked, not caring who answered.

"She's been stirring for the past few days," he heard this doctor, Ragland, answer cautiously. "Her blood had shown negative on the virus. Her scans read she's fine, her body completely healthy without any marks from cancer," Ragland said in quiet amazement. "This is the first time she has woken up."

"And usually coma patients are not this excitable or capable of moving this much after what their body went through?" Patrick said drily at the doctor.

Ragland nodded before giving him that curious gaze then at the blank face of Archer. "Who is this acquaintance of yours, Alex?" he asked.

"I'm his brother," Patrick answered lightly.

The doctor blinked before looking at them back and forth.

Older than Mercer probably by ten years, a blonde buzz cut hair, green eyes with speckled of amber-yellow, pale as death, had similar height and stature to Mercer's only just a bit leaner. Alex though, his skin was sickly pale, belonging to a corpse literally. From the rare glimpses he had seen, black hair lay under those hood, and his piercing blue eyes held an inhuman silvery quality in them.

Even their style of clothes hardly matched and how they held themselves was different. For one, Patrick was dressed in a typical mature civs clothes, the dark grey khaki pants with silver belt and tucked shirt seen amongst in business uniform.

Alex with that black leather motorcycle jacket and brown sweater hood, just looked like a well-off drug dealer. But hey he'd never seen one. Still... Ragland did find his current clothes asking suspicion of his character.

The only familiarity between them was their stature. Hardly any family resemblance between them… besides the warning bells, simple goosebumps, chills and spikes from the body that tensed, edging to burst into _flight, flight, flight_ when they enter the room. The _off-ness_ they seemed to give off.

Patrick just ignored the observation he was going through and kept his gaze on the siblings.

"She asleep?" he asked.

"Yeah," Alex answered quietly before placing her back onto the bed gently.

"She's scared," Gordon noted. "I could wipe her memory," he suggested lightly, earning a suspicious glare. "About that day she's taken. Permanently too."

"No." Alex shook his head vigorously. "It's her choice."

"She's not in the right condition to make that choice."

"Leave it, Pariah!" Alex snapped viciously, not in the mood to humour him.

Patrick just rolled his eyes then raised both his hands lightly. "Just helping," he drawled before going back to the Archer doctor, then stopped. His voice was strangely quiet when he spoke again, "She can see red."

"Explain," Alex said, matching his quiet tone.

"Visions, hallucination, The Reason brought before her eyes every damn time," Patrick continued, his eyes distant.

_Hallucination_, Ragland frowned.

"She shuts her eyes. She sees it. She opens them, it invades into reality."

"What do you mean?" he heard Alex's voice asked sharply.

"I'm saying she's brain damaged. That's one thing I can't fix, unless I literally do some tweaking to her brain," Patrick told him and then frowned. That would be lobotomizing her, just more sophisticated than any current ways.

"No." He heard the expected answer from his younger brother. "You said she was cured," Alex pointed this out flatly.

He turned his head, gazing at him slightly. "She is. I just don't know at what cost though," he said, then exhaled. "I think I'll stay for a few more days. Better yet, help the arrangement for her transfer to Houston."

He had to make sure. He had to watch her. Just in case. Without his virus in her, and hers inactive… and he was in no way wanting them activated simply because of _just in case_. He had no way other than the physical way to keep watch on her. And he did not want to risk at alerting Zeus what he could do on the biological level. He also needed to watch his younger brother. He consumed mother, so he was more likely susceptible to fall into his nature because of that despite his stubborn personality.

He was troublesome, and if mother had him, he would be more troublesome.

"And why?" Alex shot back, standing up now. Ragland took that moment to leave, as he did not want to get any trouble in standing in the same room as them. Things could go wrong quick now that Alex is standing, and trending toward looking more pissed than usual.

Patrick turned and gave a glare. "She's being watched, Zeus. Trust me, Blackwatch is going through every list of survivors that came off scot free. They're watching on every abnormal status report in their medical condition," he told him flatly. "And she's one special kind to receive mother's treatment. The only kind. Don't think her recovery is not going to go unnoticed when she has literally come out from a near-death experience that no one, not even in the history of reports in Blackwatch, survived when it comes to Redlight."

"You're bringing attention to yourself." Alex narrowed his eyes. Dana was undoubtedly in Blackwatch's spotlight. Pariah's days being anonymous could be threatened if he kept close to her. So why did he wanted to be close? "I hardly think you're the charitable sort."

_Still cautious… and a judgmental bastard_, Pariah silently thought.

"Quite the unfriendly tone you have there, when you're speaking to someone you owe her life to." Patrick turned and matched his gaze. "I'm tired, Zeus." He sighed. "And I don't want a family history repeated." No one deserves to be a test subject for Blackwatch, not even monsters.

"She's not like us." _She's not 'family!'_ Pariah held back a wince at the silent snarl of many voices coming from Zeus's end of the hive.

Annoying side-effects of the temporary unity of their links, Pariah was very aware he was much closer to Zeus's end of the hive as he could hear the whispers and the screams. They were side by side in the hivemind. He wished mother had solve that despairing problem Zeus had from consuming whole beings, but then Zeus would have to succumb to mother's whispering at some level, and he imagined it was not something his younger brother would do.

He was still surprised Zeus was able to sneak up on him despite the noisy mind he had, must be mother masking him in the hive, as well as the fact that it might be something to do with Zeus being born with no links to the hive. Zeus's strange trait of lacking links was what gave Pariah trouble with keeping him under his thumb, compared to his other siblings whom he could easily control while solving everyday mundane problems as well as managing the many minds of his employees.

Except Zeus established links… and had consumed mother, whatever immunity came with lacking links should've disappeared because of that. He should've sensed him when he was nearby. He sensed him coming, he even watched his progress during The Outbreak, but why did he fail to pick him up when he was just ten pace behind. Or maybe, he'd just gone sloppy and lazy. Pariah made a face. How could he not noticed a yawning abyss of screaming and whispers in the hive right at his face…

Mother then. It's definitely mother masking him. Perhaps she really thought he would destroy Zeus while he was naive, even went so far to protect his presence in the hive. She even hid the girl, obscuring her voice so that he couldn't pinpoint and stop the process the girl's body was going through.

Sometimes, he'd forgotten Redlight was a superorganism, an almost omniscent being in the hive. A vast complex interface. Elizabeth Greene was like no other Runner because of that, not just because she made and gave birth to him.

Pariah sighed as the numerous thoughts swirled in his vast mind, with the ones about the girl coming to the forefront. "She holds the virus in her. She's one of us," Patrick told him tiredly.

Alex's breathing went up a notch as he glared at him, black-red tendrils flickering over his body.

"A chimera. A hybrid. Just a carrier in stage zero!" he told him in a flat tone. More like a Runner in an intermediate stage, forever be stunted at that stage… as she should be. He held his hand up, in case of Mercer planning to lunge at him. He needed to explain, and Zeus wisely let him… barely, as he could hear grinded teeth coming from his brother.

"The girl's body assimilated it completely. The new virus came from the union of Redlight and Blacklight, but that wasn't enough. It replicated from her DNA, and that's establishing links. It needed to be done in order to recreate most parts of her body to be strong enough to flush out the weaker strains."

Pariah breathed in, carefully reading any sign of aggression. And it was there, from the tight stance in Zeus's posture.

"The body cannot survive without the virus, just as the virus cannot survived without the body; else the numbers would've wiped the virus out." As well as killed her... "So technically," Pariah told him truthfully. "She. Can. Be. Or might be," he added the last part quickly. A Runner.

"You said you've cured her!"

"And I don't know at what cost!" he shouted back. "You think anyone is gonna come out free from mother's virus, huh?! Especially at the level of infection she was in! She had to adapt. I forced her body to adapt!" And adaptation asks for sacrifice! Didn't he understand that?! Redlight was the next stage of what diseases could do in the future. All current cures were shit against that. Immunity meant nothing.

Pariah pinched the bridge of his nose, calming himself. "If," he stressed, "If she is what she might be, then I know what she'll be going through," he added quietly. "I can help her recover mentally. I know what to do. I know that her most bleak day would make her visions red. And then went that happens, she panics, she would stress and she would activate something that should've stayed asleep in her for the rest of her life, and leave a mess." _I can keep it deactivated forever._

"She isn't cured then! She's still under the knife!"

"She is cured! Her body is recovering!" She adapted! F'ed his opinion if that makes her not human. To Pariah, she's the next version of human if they are to survive The Reason. Hell, she's a goddamn prototype cure in dealing with super viruses like mother's and even more. It would make her surpass super soldiers not in strengths, but in raw evolution. What temporary immunity Blackwatch had would easily be tossed aside in the future, maybe used against them.

Evolution was a bitch like that. Double back-biting bitch. What blockades put would just encourage for it to grow and jump over the wall. Hence, that was why they still want something like mother… like Dana. Churning machines of the virus, so they could prepare and know what to expect.

The world was not going to be saved by him, he'd promised himself… but here he was, giving a goddamn template. He had tossed his place and responsibility onto the girl. He kept the promise he made, but he also fulfilled mother's wish, provide what was close to being a saviour for the humans. Saved her son from his destructive design.

"What's stopping her from completely being a Runner?! " Alex snarled. _From her being consumed inside out! From being a… creature just simply wearing her face!_

"Me," Patrick snapped and glared back at the icy blue eyes.

Alex just glared more at that.

"I will keep the virus's progress in her deactivated forever. And remember, it was made from her blood, her DNA. It won't harm her. Think of it as her child." But if the mother ever comes to harm… hence why he needed to keep watch on her. Stress can activate many things in the body. The virus would want to keep its host safe. The new virus wasn't like its mother's special strain, which tried to slip past under his control every damn time and doesn't just want to sit there and die, as it should have.

The new one just sits in there willingly, without him having to actively keep the deactivation on. He had definitely done something right despite using Zeus's Blacklight, certainly surprised he still could reprogram the virus's behaviour in that much detail… since Zeus's Blacklight was very stubborn under his control, not to mention it wasn't at its full potential. Wouldn't be surprise if Zeus told him it felt like being under a vice-like grip during the temporary unity of their links.

"Look, Zeus. What defines a person?" Patrick asked, staring at the darkening look on Alex's expression, hoping he would just cooperate a bit more. "Their DNA, their memories as a whole? She has both. She never died. Her heart never stopped, or her breathing neither, as well as her brain activity. Her brain. Is. Untouched." _…Mostly._ "She's not a copy. She's not a creature. She's still her, Zeus." Pariah looked at his brother but whatever effort he put in trying to calming him with words was failing terribly.

"If you're such a great master of control on the virus," Alex snarled. "Why couldn't you make her immune system rid the new virus once and for all?"

So he did had a grasp what was going on in the girl's body.

"Her body was spent, I did what I could do," Patrick answered honestly. "To restart a war would mean her death. Unless, of course, we go with using my virus." Pariah was not willing to go through it again when he had no idea what the new virus could do. He suspected it was like its mother, and more now because of Blacklight. It meant it could churn how many strains, independent strains, each virus mutated and replicated into different result, but unlike its mother, everything would be flawless, no mistake, deadly.

The probability that one or two strains could actually turn back on its host, if he gave the new virus a reason to counter-adapt against his control, was high. Mother's troublesome strain as well as Zeus's would surely give each virus that trait of being stubborn and slippery. But he liked challenge, he knew when it comes to his virus, restarting the war would be heavily advantage on his side.

Unfortunately, it was out of the question. What the girl was now made Zeus more distrustful of him more than ever.

"I wanted her to be free of the virus!" Alex hissed.

"No, you asked for her to be cured!" Pariah snapped. "And do you really, really think anyone could be free when they specifically received mother's special attention?" This is Redlight they were talking about! The girl was near death too, so he did what he knew was best at the time. But the point is, "The girl is recovering! She's alive! She can even recover from whatever damage done to her! She can still live… Zeus."

"Yet Dana still suffers what Redlight did to her!" Alex snapped and paced, a predator biding its time. _But it's not permanent!_ Pariah wanted to hiss in frustration. _She can recover!_ "She's still connected to the hive!" Alex snarled. What the girl was 'suffering' was the after affect, the cost of adapting… But she could live with it, because he could.

"I would be lobotomizing her brain if I were to cut the links and connection!" Pariah hissed back. It would defeat the purpose of what made her… her. She wasn't fully one of them, nor was she fully a human, she was something in between, in transition where many things were different, and more likely could go wrong permanently.

"Do you know how to control the virus then?" Pariah challenged as Alex paced back and forth, keeping his blue eyes glaring at him. "Do you know how to control it on the cellular level?" He glared back at Zeus. If he did, he should've understood why the girl was like this, why there was no choice of the result of the adaptation. It wasn't his fault those were the cost.

Except… Alex snapped instead and immediately punched him in the face. Patrick slid across the floor and banged against the wall. He blinked in surprise then narrowed his eyes when Alex was suddenly standing over him, glaring down on him.

"I have enough control," Alex hissed, "to stop me from punching you out of this building." He stepped back and walked away, in case he really did that. He was really tempted to do it too.

_Oh this was rich. A fucking pissing contest_, Pariah thought crossly. Zeus was really acting his age.

"Y'know what!" Pariah snapped as he sat there against the wall. "Like you said, it'll be up to her! Her choice whether or not to take my offer." He needed to watch her, and he had connection and the means to keep them covered in the long term.

"I'm not letting you talk to her."

Patrick stared at him for a long time at that. "You're really going to keep the girl from me. So much even against her choice?"

"She doesn't need to know your place in this."

Oh. This was mighty rich. Pariah blinked at that. "So I came here. Saved her. And then I'm just going to be tossed out just like that?" Well that was the first time he really felt insulted. Congratulations Alex, you are now the most asshole in the list of assholes.

"You have your own life. Go back to it."

"I have every right," Pariah hissed. "To be interested in her progress!" _Control freak_. He breathed in at the thought. But this wasn't just control. She was an unknown factor. And that was something to be watched.

"No. You. Don't."

"Oh. Just like you! Considering, y'know, you're not who she thinks you are," Pariah snapped.

Alex spun around and snarled at that. Jackpot. Pariah just got up and ignored the menacing look he was receiving, brushing the imaginary mess off his leather mackintosh jacket.

"I'm going to go shopping!" Pariah blurted. He was going to give jack shit about this pissing contest, and really, he had better things to do than indulge his younger brother's violent nature. "And I want you to think rationally when I do," he pointed despite the fact he was receiving bared teeth at that. "I haven't shown any, any reason at all for you to conclude all those paranoid conspiracy ideas in that dumb ass skull of yours," he told him before shaking his head in disgust. Then he walked out, not waiting for a reply.

Mother… if she wanted him to take the lead for the family, watch over them like some guardian angel as she had, well she was going to be sorely disappointed. And it wasn't his fault anyway. It was just Zeus being the way he was.

Pariah just grumbled at those thoughts running in his head as he strode out of there.

* * *

Alex wanted to hurl something heavy. He wanted to destroy something. He wanted to hear someone scream in pain. He wanted to hear explosions.

He tugged violently at his hood instead, pacing back and forth before looking at his sleeping sister. Suddenly he was disgusted at his violent thoughts. He was… addicted to the rush of battle, the destruction, the killings. Revulsion, rage, fear filled him, as well as sinking pit in the core of his being that spoke that he had failed. He _failed._

What he wanted was to rid any reason that would give Blackwatch the incentive to hunt Dana, as well make her future free of any trouble from the infection, and that included him. He'd planned to leave her. To tell her once she recovered enough.

He did not want to burden her.

He wanted to kill Pariah for making her like this! Except, a part of him remembered, this was what Redlight done to her. Pariah just stopped it from completely worsening the permanent damage in her. Or it could be Pariah just keeping her under the knife, held at hostage point...

She can recover. She can still live. But he didn't want her to live like this, to be burdened by whatever permanent damage done.

Alex covered his face and suddenly sat down, the sinking pit in him unbearable. In the end, he failed. He failed her. Redlight succeeded. She's now, and forever, a carrier… that could be a Runner despite whatever Pariah said. It didn't matter if she lived because she's 'one of us, now.'

"I'm sorry, Dana," he whispered to the sleeping body of his sister.

* * *

"Can I have another toy?" Elise asked through the phone.

"No," Patrick said flatly. "You can only have souvenirs."

"Aw," she moaned in disappointment. "What souvenirs are there?" she asked.

He sighed as he gazed through the glass of the souvenirs shop. "Silverware, glasses, snow globes, key chains, t-shirt," he listed.

"Boring!" Hank's voice cut in.

"Well what do you want then?" Patrick grumbled.

"Any food there that Houston doesn't have?" Hank asked, and Patrick frowned before walking along the streets of Rochester. Food was always on Hank's mind.

"Not that I know. I'll check the supermarket," he added the list to do in his head. "Anything else?"

"Post cards. Get me some post cards," Elise said. "No, send me one. By MAIL!"

He smiled. "Alright, sweet heart. How about you Hank?"

"Just food," the boy answered. "Also Jess wants to talk to you. If you're done with us, yeah?"

"Pretty postcards!" Elise added in the background as her voice faded into the distance. "I wanna see what the city looks like, okay?"

He smirked before continuing. "You're doing your homework, right, Hank?" Patrick added.

"Yeah, yeah," Hank drawled.

"Sasquatch fed?"

"Yeah. But her bowl is gone."

Oh yeah… wait. He already replaced her bowl. Patrick sighed at his infected dog. Perhaps he should get a plastic one. The metal ones would only remind Sasquatch of tin cans of joy. Any of those joys put on her bowl seems to just make the bowl part of joy so she ate it whole.

Patrick added feeding bowl into the list of shopping.

"Can I go now?" Hank complained.

"You can," he said.

"Nan!" Hank's voice called somewhere distant in the phone. "Dad's done with us."

There was fumbling and adjusting, at the chirping voice of Jess invaded into his ears, "How have you been, Patrick?"

He made a face. "I'm fine," he humoured her. "Is everything alright there?"

"Just lovely here. Nothing on fire!"

_Good to know_, he thought flatly.

"How about you, Patrick, everything alright with your family?" Jess asked politely.

_No._ "Everything is just fine, Jess!" he answered far too brightly.

"Oh! That's good to know. So when they're coming by?"

_Probably the next million years._ "I…" Patrick hesitated. "I don't know," he told her truthfully.

"They have a home right? I heard some of the survivors were stripped from theirs."

He grimaced at the conversation. "No, they don't have a home, Jess." He sighed. Not that he knew any of Zeus' future plan, that is.

"Oh," Jess voice turned into pity. "I heard strange tales coming from the survivors. They say some of the buildings got demolished because infection grows on them… like weeds." He could hear the frown in Jess's voice. "What kind of infection does that? They say it's a virus—"

"Best we don't talk about this on phone," he interrupted her. "For all I know, the whole mess in New York could've been hallucinated. Infection could have been airborne, would explain the red haze over Manhattan during the quarantine."

"That's frightening. But it wouldn't explain why the rest of New York didn't go," Jess said in puzzlement. For one, there was him discouraging the infection's growth. A mess he did not want it to grow. What if mother had taken Manhattan... New York, the East of U.S, and then down south, to Houston?

He could not bear to face his mother, because he knew... he knew what he would do.

"A lot of things are a mystery," he told her.

"I noticed. The protesters been asking what was going on during the Outbreak. They really weren't clear on where the virus came from. Anyway," Jess interrupted the serious mood. "You're planning to house them?"

"Who?" He frowned.

"Your family," Jess said the obvious.

_No. Yes. No. Yes. Yes, I need to watch the girl, younger brother too, just in case._ No, because… "Actually, I don't know about that," he began.

"Oh why's that? You're their only relatives, right?"

"Yes, I'm the only one," he drawled. If anything that Blackwatch had said were true, the girl had only one sibling... well more than one now because mother.

"Then what's stopping them?"

_An asshole._ "We're not on good terms," he told her, still grimacing.

"Is this why you hardly talk about your family? It's actually the first time I've heard of them," Jess added much to his… growing displeasure on the subject. "I'm sure they would understand and put aside any thing that happened between you two."

If Zeus can, he snorted at the thought. "Jess, you don't know my family. They're not... well." He grimaced. "My… sibling does not make a happy camper."

"How many siblings do you have, again?" Jess asked confusingly. She might be faking that old woman image, because she's being awfully nosey about this. He narrowed his eyes at that thought.

"Two," he answered neutrally. And the extra hundreds that he bullied to death… literally. He was not a good big brother. He made that clear from the beginning when he forced two hydras to slap themselves to death, repeatedly. And that was when he was bored. If he was serious or angry, what would happen in The Outbreak would've gone differently. Mostly the end result would be spattered useless biomass everywhere. The whole of New York dead, not just the city.

"So they're both not happy at the prospect of staying with you?"

"No, just one." He sighed. Well, he doesn't know what the other one felt about this.

"Oh. Sibling rivalry is it?" she said brightly.

"No," he said flatly.

"Then what's stopping you two?"

"Problems, Jess," he grumbled. "I… came from a not so good background."

"You, Gordon? That's surprising. You are much too sweet coming from something bitter. I never thought your family was one of those… unfortunate types."

"Not all foster families are a happy place." That was not true, but then he was truthful on the matter of having such a big family. They were noisy, they were annoying, they were needy, and mother loved them as she loved him. He was treated no difference really. And he wouldn't have minded, but he did, old angers and questions reminded him.

"But your mother was good, right?"

She was. He did not hold it against her nature, because it was her nature that made her loved him. He wondered, if he hadn't loved her, if he let his anger took him. What would he have become? Some Blackwatch soldier. He crinkled his nose at the thought. A toy, a tool, nothing more. A monster pet of theirs. A pitiful creature who let them win. A mindless monster, who slapped his mother's love back into her face, hurt her.

But another part spoke he was still pitiful, the one full of hate, because he was the one running. Look at him, playing as a human, the creatures he mostly despise. He hadn't changed at all from that pathetic captive lab rat. Sitting there, letting them do whatever they want to him.

Really… then what of his action in fulfilling his mother's wishes? He saved Zeus. He saved the girl. He might have saved the world. But then, that was entirely up to the girl… or Zeus, but he didn't think his younger brother would be inclined to be the messiah type. It requires a holier than thou attitude or the most selfish thought. Zeus was better than the humans in terms of evolution, but he was cynical creature who knew he was no better at solving the world's problem, considering brute force and straight-forward thought was mostly his way.

And then there was another part of him, the one who was… that empty runner. That part of him that just coldly felt nothing about his current life, who even felt nothing of the inevitable coming change, yet it was that part of him that was curious. It led him to make the man staring back in his reflection.

But another, the one that spoke of links, connection, whole, the loyal son, just simply thought this life was a phase. And he knew it was a phase. It did not care; it did not regret that he didn't release the dreams of connection in the past, or even delayed his mother's will. Waiting is part of nature, so this was just a delay. In the end, nature would win. He was like a virus incubating...

Nature and design, he was a shattered son because of that, and mother loved him no matter what, despite the marks on his psyche. She easily accepted, but why couldn't he? Acceptance was what this pariah sought. Yet he couldn't even accept himself.

How did his mother do it? To his eyes, she was great because of her accepting nature, or maybe it was just her brain fried of common sense and judgment. But still… that judgment had stopped a son that would have destroyed them all ages ago. Monster the world called her, but she would forever be a mother because of her undying and unprejudiced love. The world, oblivious, that the one who caused the Outbreak had also saved them from a son who would've willingly killed them all.

"She was." He smiled bitterly. "She was a good mother." She would have made a loving mother if the world did fall… it wouldn't be so bad. But, his expression darkened. It's not that simple. Her greatness was also her flaw. Because there were some things, some humans who don't deserved such love, such grace.

He couldn't follow her nature, his nature, because of that. Because the one part that made him shattered, full of hate, would rather cut, cauterize, and destroy the infesting sickness in humanity's nature. That was what Blackwatch designed him to be, a weapon who would willingly destroy… if it weren't for mother's love. How could she easily accept the filthy bad traits in the humans, in him? How could she accept despite all of what Blackwatch had done to her, to them? No one could love humans so much after facing what she had faced.

She even accepted the flaws in her own children. The Hunters would hunt the lower infecteds like they were foods, biomass, fuels to be used. His mother could not see it as children eating other children, she could not see the horrors of that. For her, it was the nature of things, becoming one. One. They lived on anyway in her mind, since she remembered all who were infected, who were assimilated by the growing infection. Runners remember. They were interface, back-ups, server and hub all rolled in one.

It was why Hope still cried out in her, in them, as if they were still alive. His mother, catatonic, stuck in the past, swirled by visions of the future, and him barely holding her in the present. She was lost amidst the sea of voices, in her own world with a viral copy of Hope in her head.

He was not enough for her.

Now, living as a human, what mother would do to the human race would only… degrade them, not improve. And some didn't deserve that. Humans were not children no matter what, even if it was a merciful act…

They didn't deserve mother, her grace. And not entirely because it would degrade them, but because... they were unworthy creature. To feel the love, the intimacy, the potential of what a hivemind would give... they didn't deserve that.

They were cancers, they would corrupt and ruin such connections. Why couldn't she see that? Look at Zeus, look at his mind. Perhaps the virus reducing them into pitiful state was mercy... on the hive that is.

Those chains of thoughts were what still made him reluctantly admit his mother was flawed. It was why he did not help her. Besides, he already had said his farewell a long time ago.

Patrick sighed.

"Hopefully your sibling would understand there's only good in your heart for what you're offering." Jess said.

He smiled fondly at the old woman. Good… there was nothing good. There was only convenience. Or maybe more. And he didn't know what that more is. Perhaps mother would know. She always had these simple obvious answers. "I hope he does, Jess. I hope he does," he told the old woman and gazed up to Minnesota's cold cloudy grey skies.

The sun was about to set.

* * *

She woke, eyes opening to stare at the whiteness around her. Something sweet whiffed into her nose. Flowers, lilies, her mind whispered. Her head turned slowly to her left, to see a man seated still by the chair near her, hands covering his face as he sat hunch. Curly brown mass of hair she last remembered from a long time ago were now matted black sleeks, as if needing a shower. He's been neglecting himself, she thought quietly in her staring. His hood was down, his black leather jacket missing, leaving him with his only brown zip-up sweater.

How long had he been there? Why was he sitting there, looking so… depressed?

"Alex," she called out, but blinked at the strange croaking sound that came out of her.

However weak her voice was, it seemed to jerk her brother out of his reverie. Haunted blue eyes looked up from his hands and widened slightly, softened, then changed back into something neutral.

"Dana," he breathed and immediately stood over her.

She smiled then looked down at her hand. He probably didn't realize he had grabbed hers.

"How lon-" she frowned, so surprised how hoarse her voice was.

Her brother just stared there for a while, looking at her in almost disbelieving fashion, then he blinked rapidly, moving into a blur of motion to the other end of her bed. There was a plastic jug and a mug. He poured the water then quickly grabbed the mug. Dana heard something crack and she heard a soft curse.

The cup had broken in his hold. Something flashed on his face, but it was quickly gone, leaving a despondent look.

"It's okay," she whispered to him.

He looked up, having heard her words despite how weak it was.

"I'll get you another one," he told her gently before turning.

"Wait." He stopped and turned his head slightly. She opened her mouth but shook her head, "I-it's nothing," she whispered. It seemed silly, but she didn't want him to leave.

He stood there, staring at her concernedly for a while. "I'll go now," he said gently and walked out.

Dana laid there, half-upright, waiting, her eyes wandering around her white empty room. There was a metal trolley, which sat near her bed; a desk covered with papers and reports on the other end of the room; a board with charts and x-ray diagram. This room looked like it was a research place. Her eyes fell to the bedside table, now looked like one of those moving table, a bouquet of lilies laid on it with a card tied to its ribbon.

With a quiet grunt, she moved slightly nearer to her right and narrowed her eyes when she read the card. The writing rough but neat.

_Get well soon. A._

A. Alex? She blinked at that and smiled then frowned. He'd never done something like that, but then this was the first time she was a patient in a hospital.

"You're up," a stranger's voice called from the end of her bed.

Where… Her head turned and her expression turned guarded at the green-eyed man standing in front of her bed, wearing a black turtleneck and a grey khaki with a silver belt.

Strange, she didn't hear him coming.

"They put you out of quarantine, after the tenth clearance," he told her. "Usually the process takes three days or more on each blood sample. But the recent new type of scans showed you're clean."

"Who-" she began cautiously.

"It will be up to _him_ to tell you that," the blonde man told her. "Have you been having… strange dreams?" he asked gently.

She shook her head. Was he her doctor or something?

"Does your sight get fuzzy, any change?" he continued despite making her uncomfortable.

She shook her head again.

"Do you remember what happened to you?"

Grimacing a bit out of annoyance, she opened her mouth but stopped, her lips went dry as her hands suddenly shook without her control. She gripped the white woollen blanket tightly as the images flashed.

Flesh, ugly slimy flesh, the claws digging into her belly, a roar sung, the street so far below and everything a red blur. Alex's desperate yet determined look on his face.

"Y-yes," she whispered, her voice shaking.

"You're alive now," The stranger's stern voice cut in. "Safe. Safe and far away from harm," he told her gently. "The quarantine is over. No monsters exist. They're all dead. You're in Rochester, Minnesota now. Not Manhattan."

She nodded at what she heard then relief washed when Alex walked in the room with a new mug.

"What are you doing here?" a surprising growl came from Alex as he slowly made his way towards her, eyes still watching on the stranger.

"Checking up on the girl," the blonde man answered. "And I'm going to tell her what the current plan is."  
A mug filled with lukewarm water was held in front of her. She grabbed a hold of it and drank slowly while listening.

"I don't need your help anymore," Alex snapped at the stranger.

"Really?" the stranger said sardonically.

"Alex," Dana called out, resting the mug on her lap, concern at what was transpiring in front of her. "What's going on?" she asked.

"You're moving to Houston," the stranger told her.

"The hell she's not!" Alex snapped and stepped forward.

"It's her choice if she wants to go, once you tell her of the current situation. Or do you want me to do it?" the stranger said flatly, unfazed at the cold rage in Alex's face.

"Alex," she called aloud. "Who the fuck is this?" she demanded.

"Your brother from another mother," the stranger interrupted much to her growing annoyance about him.

Alex turned at her voice then looked away from her questioning eyes. "He's… an acquaintance," he answered stiffly.

That's helpful, she thought, growing frustrated at the cryptic answer. "What is going on here?" she demanded then breathed in, closing her heavy eyes, surprised at being tired already.

"You're an asymptomatic carrier," the stranger answered again.

_Can't this guy just let my brother answer?_ She thought crossly.

"What does he mean by that?" she asked, looking at her brother who seemed to be avoiding her gaze.  
"You carry the virus, Dana. It's just… doesn't do anything to you," Alex answered, hesitating.

"Is it infectious?" Dana asked quietly. Asymptomatic… now she recalled, carriers that carry the disease but shows no symptoms, and unknowingly spread it to those in contact. She would be locked away then, if they were talking about the same virus that ran rampant in Manhattan's street. Unless there was a cure.

"No," the stranger answered this time. "They don't know you even have it. The scan shows clear because it's inactive in your body."

"And there's no way to get rid of it," Alex added viciously while glaring at the stranger.

"You want to kill her?" the stranger snapped. "We could make her go through hell again just to rid it! But hang on, she's just starting to recover," the stranger shot back. "And no, even if she gets well, the risk is undeniably high, and would damage her more since it's more efficient and better than its predecessor," he snapped, green eyes matching the blue. "And this time, there won't be any virus there to reverse the damage, considering that the only one there is forced to war against its host. Not even if we use your virus, because I can guarantee it would turn it against her as well."

"And yours won't," Alex spat.

"I know my virus a lot more," the stranger snapped. "And knowing goes a long way."

"W-what is going on here!" Dana snapped.

"You're a carrier," the stranger repeated again calmly.

"I know that!" she said impatiently. "But who are you—"

"Ask him." The stranger pointed at her brother before she could finish. This guy is one annoying… she fumed. "But short answer is, I'm… what he is and more," he told her.

What. He said what. That didn't go past her.

"What does he mean by that, Alex?" Dana looked up and stared at her brother.

He continued to look away from her, but she noticed he was grimacing.

"You should tell her now. Not later," the stranger told him before walking away.

"She just woke up! She doesn't need more on her mind!" Alex snapped at him.

"So it would be better later?" The stranger stopped and looked at him in a mild expression despite the glare he was receiving. "When she's snooping in confidential information that would assuredly notify Blackwatch when she needs to be in hiding? Or when she's declaring the innocence of her brother's place in the mess?"

Alex snarled when he heard that. Dana looked at her brother in surprise.

"What does he mean by this?" Dana demanded, confused and angry at being ignored.

"Tell her now," the stranger told Alex, then his expression softened. "I'm not here to get rid of your place, Zeus. But I want this mess cleared," he told him sternly. "This is her second life, new start to everything, so start it right instead of dragging the mess across."

"It's none of your business," Alex snapped.

"That's when you're wrong. You brought me into this, and I plan to see through it to the end," the stranger growled.

Both glared at each other before the stranger broke contact and walked out of the room. Oppressive silence filled the room as she looked at her brother, waiting for him to say something, anything.

"Alex," she called out. "What does he mean by all this?"

He said nothing, still looking away from her.

"Alex!" she demanded. "Please," she added. _Talk to me. Don't close up on me, not like last time…_ For five years they hadn't spoken, she lost contact of him in high school, and that teenage girl thought he was dead after their last spat.

She did not want that to happen again.

"You're tired, you need rest," Alex finally spoke.

She shook her head at this. No. No, he's not going to avoid this. "I'm awake enough to understand the situation. What did he mean, Alex? I want answers," her voice turned cold as she stared at her brother. "Look at me at least," she said.

She heard a shuddering exhale from him and then he turned around facing her, his eyes on the floor, still avoiding her look.

"Tell me," she said to her brother. This was so entirely unlike the man she knew, who would always gaze challengingly back at the world, even at her opinion on the matter. He always had pushed her aside, and it was kind of one and many reasons that led to their spat. And she's not going to let him do that again, no matter what. "Please," she added again.

"I don't know how to tell you though," he said quietly. "It's a complicated mess."

She sighed. "Did you remember at least, and found out what you were looking for?" she asked. The Outbreak, Hope, Elizabeth Greene, Gentek suspicious project, and of course the virus, she knew he was involved in this mess. But just how much and why?

"Yeah." His voice sounded so bitter.

"Why don't you start there?" She was an investigative journalist, and part of it was to ask the right question to get a person talking. Stories weren't poured out of speculation, they needed proof and witness else the writer would sound like an insane trash.

"Are you sure you want to—" Alex hesitated when he noticed the grave look on her face. He exhaled heavily before looking around. "You just woke up though." His voice was quiet, and she softened her expression.

"I'm fine," she told him. "Just a bit tired but that's all."

Alex looked up and gazed at her for a long time. "It started with Penn station," he said.

Penn station… she had followed leads where The Outbreak began, and Penn station was dominantly the name associated with that. Annoyingly enough, she couldn't get the security footage, none at all as it's been erased. What copies there were were fuzzy from the corruption of data, and showed footage during the wrong time and days.

"Go on," she encouraged him.

"Gentek," he began. "Was working on a secret project for Blackwatch. The cover of the story was that they were researching the cure for cancer," he told her with disgust in his voice. "It was a lie. They were working on a virus meant for war."

"Biological warfare..." she whispered. "That's—" She blinked rapidly. She was not surprised at the insanity mankind can get up to, but… "The government allowed this?" America would risked this on their soil?

"It's a blurry line," Alex told her gravely. "Blackwatch can make the current government's face look like puppets. They're behind all of this, mostly, but they're following some New World higher-ups. They wanted a weapon, a virus that aims at certain ethnicities. If not, the other is a means that could improve… human's aptitude. Make them stronger, faster, smarter," he told her.

"Like steroids… just better," she said drily. He nodded. "So they're engineering a virus that could make super soldiers." He nodded again.

"This Blackwatch," Dana began. Remembering the black gas mask, their highly nonexistent presence in any record. She dug up Gentek's sins, but their involvements were highly censored in it. She only found their symbol, the winged star, by chance. Even then she needed to hear their name from the military. "Are they like some secret black ops or something?"

He nodded grimly before he added, "Except they deal with biological warfare only."

Okay, shady military government, secret and probably illegal projects, and the virus the focus of it all, and she guessed the virus made those zombies that infested Manhattan's streets. She'd never seen it in person, but the footage she'd found during her research was undeniable, and that…that monster. She closed her eyes, breathing in deeply, remembering that ugly creature that broke the wall, its claws snatching onto her.

It was just… crazy. Something heard from conspiracist's mouth and those who believe the world has been visited by aliens. But she was a journalist, and occasionally those type of stories did get a headline of their own, whether to believe in it or not is up to the readers. But fucking hell, the government let this type of research going on? How many were there?

"Tell me more on the virus," she said, realizing he went silent again.

"It's called Redlight." He grimaced. "It was the virus that was infesting the streets of Manhattan," Alex told her quietly and he suddenly began to pace, restless, fidgeting unlike the still stony man she knew from the past. "What it can do…" he began again then stopped in his pacing. "It's a churning machine, Dana. It produces strains, mutating as it replicates and grows. Any vaccine against it would be useless, as it would just mutate into another strain entirely. It also meant it has the possibility to produce one strain that would give them what they want."

"A super virus," she murmured. She had read enough medical article during high school. She was curious, after all, what made biology so interesting for Alex.

"Yeah," Alex said quietly. So soft-spoken. Never knew he would mellow. It was different from the last time when he demanded, his tone hard even when they reunited for the first time after five years of no communication between them. Hadn't changed that cold exterior of his. But now… she gazed at him softly. He was so different, more… open.

"How did they manage to build a cure then?" Dana frowned. "Wait, I was infected with this virus, right?" She looked at him.

He nodded again, letting action speak louder. "You—"

Images flashed and she flinched. "I was taken, infected," she said quietly. Voice, a face… red, she remembered. She recalled the empty expression on the red-haired woman gazing emptily back with those green eyes and her whispers. The reason… the wailings, the crying… the pain, so much pain, why does it cry so much? She sucked in her breath and shook herself from her thoughts. "That girl, Elizabeth Greene, what is she?"

_The Reason… for Everything._ She squeezed her eyes shut, exhaling her breath in a shudder when the whispers swarmed up from nowhere.

Alex looked at the sudden pained expression in her face. "Dana, are you okay?" he asked.

"Tell me, Alex. What is she?" Dana whispered, then sucked in her breath again, her hands clenching and unclenching. The room… felt so cold all of a sudden, so vast yet small, and suddenly she just wanted her brother's hand holding hers like when he did after she woke up.

"Elizabeth Greene. She was a test subject, from a project named Carnival II. The only remnant after Blackwatch experiment and nuked Hope, Idaho," Alex continued cautiously, watching her carefully. "Unlike any… infected," he grimaced when he said that. "She was special. The virus manifested in her and she continued to live, was still able to think despite what it was doing in her. She can even control those who are infected and the virus itself. She's what Blackwatch would call a Runner."

"So what is she?" Dana asked, her voice quiet, still not understanding the nature of these Runners.

"Runners exist to spread the virus," Alex told her grimly. "In fact she succeeded at doing that. She had infected most of Manhattan."

"So she started The Outbreak." Dana looked at her brother then noticed the hesitation.

"They were two outbreaks," he told her. "There was Redlight, and it wasn't meant to be unleashed, it escaped." He grimaced, recalling how Elizabeth Greene knocked him back when they first met. It wasn't because how strong her hit was, it was the painful mental lash as well when his body made contact with her hand. Tendrils that were there to form into whatever he wished felt stiff during that time, until he realized it was because of a very vast and heavy presence literally pressing down on his mind when she spoke. Elizabeth Greene was no human test subject after that. She had became something else in his eyes.

He breathed before continuing as his eyes narrowed, "The other… Gentek current project were to… improve Redlight in what it can do, and that was basically rewriting the whole DNA. They just wanted to make it give more...controlled result." His face turned into disgust. "They succeeded, they made a super virus that's ten time dangerous than it's… mother."

"So they're a bunch of mad scientists," she said drily. "Unethical, immoral psychopathic bastards."

He winced at that, and then she remembered he was a Gentek scientist as well. My god… "Alex, did you work on this?" Dana whispered, dreading the answer.

He looked away. "Alexander J. Mercer lead the project, yes," he told her quietly. Dana searched his face, his guilt-written face. Why was he talking like that? "And he knew the true nature of the virus and the purpose it was meant for." A weapon.

"H-how…" she began. Hundreds, thousands… died! How could he—

"The deadlier virus was called Blacklight, the strain is named DX-1118 C," he continued grimly, ignoring the accusing look she was giving. "And the thing is it's a prototype." He hesitated. "It kills, and when it doesn't, something else comes out. A three-weeks old batch can make super soldiers," he told her. "Penn station," he continued numbly and it came pouring out, "That was the first time it was released. But it wasn't a three-weeks old version. It was undiluted, pure Blacklight. It killed everything within minutes, nothing came out; no infected, no survivors. What it infects; it copies, combine, mutates so much that there's nothing left of what came before—"

"Who released it?" Dana asked quietly.

"Alex," he answered quietly. Oh God… Alex, how… She looked down at her hands, now clenching tightly on the blanket out of anger. How was he even alive then? "H-he—" Alex continued.

She stared at him angrily. "Why are you referring yourself like that?" In the third person? She searched again at the hurt expression on his face. Was he trying to escape his role in making thousands dead?!

After a long stare, he admitted softly, "I'm not… him."

She shut her eyes, eyebrows furrowing. "What do you mean?!" she snapped, frustrated at his avoidance on the issue. She can't believe… a coward. That's… Alex was never a coward. A runner, but not a coward, and here he was. Disgusted, she shook her head.

"Alexander J. Mercer worked on the virus, Blacklight," he continued numbly, avoiding her gaze. "He noticed scientists working on the project were one by one going missing. Considering the nature of Redlight, he knew what he worked on was shady as fuck," Alex told her quietly. "So he made plans while trying to find out what was going on. And took a vial of Blacklight as an incentive. It was his pride and joy, his masterpiece," the words escaped with a snarl, then he grimaced when he saw her lost look.

What… She laid there and stared at him for a long, not comprehending what she was hearing.

There was nothing to do now but to finish it. "Penn Station, he went there with the virus, but he was cornered by Blackwatch, and he was shot dead," Alex rasped as he gazed at her pale expression, his voice so… small.

Dead, shot dead, but… she stared at him. He was standing here, in front of her, how is he… and it began to click in place. _Copy._

"The vial broke. And he fell on it." _Combining… mutates so much that…_

_Something else comes out_, she remembered what he'd said. No survivors, no infecteds. Something else comes out…

"Three days later, I woke up in a morgue," Alex said hoarsely, his voice surprisingly weak.

There was a period of days he was missing… Dana recalled. He stopped calling her entirely for about a week before the Outbreak went down.

_I'm not… him._

She shut her eyes and a tear escaped. A… thing. He was a thing. Like… an infected. Except it was using her brother's body. A… virus wearing his face.

But. But he was talking, he was looking at her concernedly. Infected were those ugly things in the streets with tumors growing on their faces, which would rather eat and kill anything in front of them. If not like those monsters, like… the one that took her… She shuddered. He was neither of them.

A… Runner then? But he wasn't spreading the virus. He was that… clueless amnesiac brot—man…person, being who came to her, who punched a guy who threatened her right through. Who didn't knew what was going on as much as she did.

_Who killed..._

And then there was her brother. He caused thousands to die. He willingly carried despite… his situation holding him at a gunpoint. Incentive. Planning to sell, planning to blackmail, willingly risked the idea to release a vial containing the deadliest virus known to mankind to the world. Even if he succeeded to escape, he would still cause thousands, millions to die. He should have… tried to end it, destroy it, but instead he released it, he had willingly worked on a weapon. There was no denying, she knew her brother was smart enough to figure out the nature of the virus, yet he still worked on it. Did he die, and then it fell from his hand and broke? Or did he die as he threw it and broke?

Alex… Alex… challenging the world, not believing in anyone, not trusting anyone, no faith in anything, always pushing people all to the side. Somehow what he had done was not so unsurprising when knowing the man that was her brother.

_He used me._ Her chest shook. She thought when he came back, that her being the only person he could trust as he'd told her before the mess started. Trust was a big thing for Mercer, for Alex. She actually thought that he cared at least about her. But he carried a fucking deadly virus and released on the same ground she was on. That was her brother that did it.

The one who saved her when the mess caught up to her… the whole time… it wasn't him. It wasn't even him. He saved her, he was concerned about her, that he cared about her, but it was not even him.

And… him, this… thing, she frowned, upset, confused. What… he, he wears her brother's face.

"I…" he-it-he began. "I… didn't know I was not him," he told her gently.

She looked at him as silent tears fell. "You used me as well," she whispered and cried, feeling betrayed. Her brother's betrayal… _its_… they were blurring.

"No!"

"Please," she said hoarsely. "Get out."

Alex stared, shocked before a saddened look past his face. "For what it's worth," he said quietly. "I still think of you as my sister even after… learning the truth."

She blinked and looked up only to stare at an empty room.

* * *

Ragland noted her lack of… enthusiasm on her food, when she pushed her barely eaten dinner away. It was the same at breakfast, four-five bites, and she stopped entirely before pushing it aside. She even lacked interest in the reading materials, the recent newspapers with the Outbreak on their headline.

"You need to eat," Ragland said gently.

"I'm not in the mood," she replied quietly as she laid there beneath her white blanket.

Ragland sighed then turned, almost startled to see Mercer's… brother staring unhappily at the girl.

"What's wrong with her?" the green eyes asked, his sharp gaze lingering on him.

"I don't know, but… something's shaken her," Ragland said before walking out with the recent report his hand.

Patrick blinked at this before shaking his head in disgust. He took a chair from the wall, dragged it to the bed and picked up the food.

"Eat," he said to the girl with a spoon filled with porridge at her face. She just stared through it. Then he added, "I had to do this for a four year old girl suffering depression due to the fact she had the worst case of leukaemia. Trust me, I can't get tired so I can hold this spoon for hours, days even. We could even try a year."

She continued to stare at him quietly with that empty expression on her face.

Patrick just stared back grimly. "I don't know what he told you, but know that he really cared. He even went so far he tried to use that darn strain of his to make a cure, and when that didn't work, he brought me here, turned my life upside down, demanded the fudge cake out of me to cure you. Don't. Waste. This. Second life," he snapped.

She looked away, her glistening eyes blinking rapidly. "I won't," she whispered. "I'm just not in the mood," she said quietly.

Patrick sighed and put the plate down. "Then what's wrong?" he asked.

She said nothing.

He had a horrible urge to put his virus in her just to make her at least… more loosen.

"Look, I know everything," he said. "Blackwatch, the truth about the Outbreak, what he is and all. You don't need to keep quiet because of secrets," Patrick told her. "So what is wrong?"

"Everything," she answered stiffly.

"Everything?"

"It's all a lie," she spouted.

"What's a lie?" he asked gently.

"The whole thing they're saying on the news, the…" She breathed. "It's a mess!" she blurted.

"What's a mess?" he continued in that annoyingly calm tone.

"Thousands died because… because of one… selfish… fuck!" She breathed, grimacing. "And there's him... he's not my brother, but…" she added hoarsely.

"But?" Patrick said gently.

"Why did he do it? I'm not his sister but…" she said looking at him, confused.

"Because he cares, obviously."

"I know that!" she snapped before exhaling heavily. Her eyes finally rested on him. "Who are you?" she asked finally, wanting to be distracted at the mess of her current thoughts.

"A miracle worker," he answered simply. She gave a flat look at him. He smirked, before adding, "The name's Patrick, Patrick Gordon. I'm like him but more."

"So what exactly are you?" she asked, staring at him, cautious yet curious.

"Runners. That's what he is too, but we're a special case, for one, we're the only male ones, and a bit more _in-control_ than the female counterparts," Patrick answered calmly. "He's…" Patrick thought about what his body actually is. "You can say a living virus. Like me. The difference is I was born like this. He was made. Not to mention, our virus shared the same mother, or origin."

She blinked. "Redlight, right?"

He nodded gravely. "Elizabeth Greene, she was Redlight. Technically, she's my mother. I was made out of her cells, and she gave birth to me."

Dana stared in thought, recalling the young woman that looked more near her age. College girl. Then she compared it to this late-thirties dark blonde man. Green eyes, he shared green eyes. "But you're old," she noted quietly. He looked older than his mother! He looked nothing like his mother!

"Zeus is barely one year old, and he looks like he's in his thirty," Patrick said drily. "Age, appearance, means nothing to us."

"Zeus…" she trailed. "That's Alex's codename," she whispered then frowned, realizing she had used her brother's name on some...thing. "Did Blackwatch made you?" she asked quickly, wanting the avoid the persistent headache.

"You could say," Patrick answered neutrally. "The experiment at Hope, Idaho resulted me. I was their lab rat for thirties years since my birth, then I got tired of their bullshit," he said brightly.

"You're very willing to tell me all of this," she said, frowning and added, "why?"

"What's the point of not telling?" he told her.

Dana sighed. "I don't know," she grunted then added bitterly, covering her face in frustration, "I don't know about anything." Enough time had past for her to contemplate the issue, and she had grown tired of going through it in circle.

She wished it was just a bad dream, but the only bad dreams that plagued her now were... _red_.

"That's what Blackwatch aim for, so it's not your fault if you don't know anything since you're not supposed to," he said the obvious but noticed the flat look she was giving. "I'm not helping, am I?" he told her.

"No," she answered curtly, before frowning. "I was infected."

"Yes." He nodded. "And you would've died, or even worse, become something else entirely. Most likely a Runner."

A Runner… like Elizabeth Greene, she recalled._ I could've been a monster... turned cities into ruins._

"Ragland said my case was impossible," she said quietly.

"It was. In fact, it should've left permanent mark in you. Cancer marks."

She looked at him again. "And then you came. My…" she grimaced. "He said Runners can control the infection."

Patrick nodded. "Your case wasn't that simple. Control means nothing if the virus is incapable of undoing any damage done inside you. You had a very powerful strain in you; even a cure version of Blacklight was defeated by it."

"Then h—" she began.

"Me," he cut in. "There's me. I'm currently the oldest Runner that ever lived, the rest were killed," he told her mildly. "The only thing we could do is to combat it with another virus. Your brother could have done it, but infecting…" He paused. There was a difference between him and his mother. He controlled. Mother would let it run free, natural but still under her guidance. "It's a very delicate process. He knew his limits," Patrick finished, deep in thought. Consuming mother gave Zeus nothing; sketchy memories, strange alien thoughts that didn't make sense. If he did wanted to understand… he would have to succumb, and again, it wasn't something his younger brother would do.

"I'm afraid to be cured of the virus, you had to be adapted. The cost is being a carrier," he added then sighed. "You don't know how much mess that put me in, your brother punched me," he grumbled, rubbing his face.

"I… I still don't understand why you helped?" she asked quietly.

"Well, it was either help you like your brother asked, or kill you both and eat you."

Dana moved back away. _"The people I've killed, they're in me."_ She sucked in her shaky breath then looked at the smiling green eyes. Is this guy serious? "I'm…" She shifted uncomfortably. "Glad you went with option one?"

"Me too!"

What? She stared at him with her blue wide eyes at lost. "...okay," she said this weakly.

He chuckled at her reaction, and finally answered properly, "I did it for him." She frowned when she looked at him again. "I actually pity him."

Dana blinked, still frowning as she heard this.

"You don't know how much family means to us," Patrick continued. "Without family, we're kinda meaningless, just… monsters."

"He's not a monster," she breathed these words out then blinked in surprise at what she'd said.

"I know." Patrick smiled. "Wish it was that simple. Us, just monsters doing their thing. It isn't. The virus is like a bond to Runners. When Runners infect, they're actually making family. So, whatever he told you that they exist to infect and make monsters, he's not wrong, but also not right. Runners exist to make family; the bigger, the better," he told her grimly.

She blinked, her expression darkening. "When… I was in coma. I heard a voice, her voice," she began quietly, her eyes growing distant. "She called me her daughter." She shuddered. "I actually felt… like one." Dana hugged her arms. _God…_ she thought, shuddering at what she felt, the connection. She felt… she felt _whole_, and now, now… she felt like something in her had been snatched away and cut off. "And then there was the wailings, the crying…"

Patrick gazed at her silently. "Just hallucinations. They're nothing."

"It sounded so real, the pain, it kept crying and…" Dana whispered. "I wanted to help, to reach out." _I still do…_

His face darkened at that soft whisper in the hivemind. "See what I mean?"

"Is it… real? It felt so real, it sounded so real, the crying," she added quietly. "In fact," she frowned. "What was crying?"

He stared at her for a long time. "The world," he answered stiffly.

"You can hear it?"

"Sometimes," he told her.

"Does Alex?"

"He's…" Pariah stopped, grimacing. "He's special amongst the Runners. For one, he can't hear it."

"How come?"

"Remember, he was made. He's a synthetic virus, manually mutated so a lot of things go a bit different than the natural way." He sighed. "He could make himself hear it, but he chose not to. He'd rather stay away. But he knows, he heard it once, he just… doesn't understand." Patrick pursed then looked at her grimly. "Try to forget about it. Move on. It's over," he told her.

"I don't think I'll ever forget," she said quietly. "It's not something you can."

True.

"Can you bring him back?" she asked suddenly.

He looked up and frowned. "Who?" He knew who she was implying, he just needed a confirm.

She breathed in deeply. "Alex," she said quietly. "Him." He wasn't a thing, he wasn't an it. He was… her brother. Not Alexander J. Mercer, the one who cared for her, raised her, taught her… but ultimately left her. She knew. That brother was dead a long time ago. She felt stupid, she felt so angry still at herself, for hoping so much that Alex would care. But he didn't. That was what hurt her more.

But the one who ultimately cared for her…In the end, was her brother, even how confusing it was. She could not forget that she'd said the words before they were forcefully parted, _"no matter what, you're still my brother."_ She meant it, she had said it to him. To that amnesiac being that she thought was her brother now and forever, not that man from five years ago with whom she could barely connect with. A part of her had even hoped that when he did remember, she hoped he would never resume being the man he was. Alex having amnesia, was like a new chance to redeem himself, to separate himself from that… brother she knew.

It was him that she worried every time he left the safehouse. Funny, five years ago, she didn't give a damn thought about the spat until the guilt grew. Maybe it was all her, maybe she was the selfish one for getting in the way, he was pursuing his dream, that's why he pushed her aside.

Except now she knew better. He pushed everyone aside, she was treated like no other. The amnesiac was… a different being altogether, he tried to clasp things back together even if it was for the lack of his memory. And that was it, he was already different, separate from the beginning, she just simply had to add 'he never was' her brother. Not that man from five years ago, not that boy who had to take care of her, never Alexander J Mercer, not even amnesiac, just a being who was at lost and knew nothing, simply assumed her brother's identity.

Perhaps she was deluding herself, but it wasn't easy to get rid of the feeling that she cared despite the truth. She cared for that person, that being, as well for that lost brother of hers. The latter was what made her angry yet aggrieved, because… because she no longer had that brother who she grew up with.

She never had him. He was dead. Dead before even the mess went down. Dead before their spat five years ago. She should know that she lost her brother when he barely called her, when he ran from his past, leaving her.

So what did she get instead? Him, who cared more. A being who had nothing, knew nothing, yet cared more than her brother ever did, tried to rectify the people who led the mess, and for what reason?

Alexander J Mercer cared for her because they were in hell together, because they lived together in a household with an abusive mother. He never had a sense of justice, to stop bad things from happening, only when something wrong happened to him that's when he acts. In fact, her brother was the type to enjoy kicking a hornets nest because it meant others being screwed. He was willing to face the physical side of abusement if it was to bring trouble to their mother.

_But why did he cared?_ It was certainly not because of an abusive household this time. Revenge? Hardly right, because no one was unaffected by the mess, the Outbreak would be like bad karma finally striking them and he should be satisfied with just that. Yet he stayed, wanting to find out, wanting to make people pay for what they'd done, and he had every reason to be as he was legitimately pissed, and anyone would be but he was going to do something about it.

She grimaced, she was very worried on that bit. A hint of the older brother she knew. But he came back again, and again, when the brother she knew would've left, had left. It's why she had preferred… him being amnesiac, if it meant for him to be better than he was.

It still didn't explain why he cared for her so much. She heard from Ragland of the trouble he went through to just cure her. The doctor even hinted his involvement in stopping the infection.

Patrick, this… person told her it was because family was important. So did he care more because it was in his nature? She hardly thought it was, because he never had infected her, and even if he did, it was only to inject a cure into her. So she hardly counted his nature into this. Again, she might be deluding herself, but it was hard to see him something else than a… brother, instead of whatever Patrick saw him as.

This was just a damn confusing mess. He was not her brother, but he… he just felt like one, yet she barely knew him now that she remembered how brief their interactions were. But… didn't she came to New York to get to know her brother? _Well he's dead._ She already knew all she needed, she grunted in frustration.

Still… she wanted to know him, the one who cared her. She owed it to him anyway. Perhaps they could start again, now that the mess was over.

"If it makes you feel better, you're still his sister. For one, you carry the virus," Patrick told her. "Two, that's how he feels about you."

"I know." She smiled at the last part. "I… I shouldn't have lashed out," she said sadly, remembering the words she spoke.

"Technically you're also my sister now," Patrick added, ignoring what she'd said purposely. "Through the virus." It was like blood, the similar genes between relative, but it could also be a mental chain tighter than any bonds the humans have for another. Now that he thought about the effect the links have, it could be worse than Stockholm syndrome.

But he wasn't sure the effect was still there, and he highly doubted it worked that way now that mother was gone. That's why dissidence occurs every time a Runner is killed. Plus, what connection she had with the hive was weak. She was a carrier too; it was a bit different when it came to them. It was subtler, not outright mind control. Doesn't change the fact however small the infection, the change her brain went through might beg to differ.

Besides, to keep the effects on, they would need a… hive leader, like mother. Zeus was nothing like that, he wasn't yet but he should be because… because mother. He must've been unconsciously repressing a part of him. Pariah, he just switched that part of him off like a manual switch. But the girl… he grimaced. Another reason to watch her.

Dana didn't hear him. She was lost in her own thoughts as she gazed into the distance.

He smiled. "I'll get that dumb ass brother of yours," he told her standing up before gazing at her. "You're going to eat now, right?" he stared at her for a long time.

"Yeah!" she snapped, wanting for him to go away and leave her to her thoughts.

"Alright then." He smiled and walked out, but paused. "By the way, you guys happen to know how to bowl?"

* * *

A/N: If you see space where they don't belong. Blame Fanfiction. Fucking ruined the formatting when it converted the docx.

**Omake: Freaky Friday**

**Pariah glared, his green eyes swirling into amber-gold and silver ones matched his gaze. Zeus's claw in his flesh as his own fingers gouged into his chest.**

**"Using my own tricks on me won't make you win, Zeus!" he snarled at his brother as Zeus bared his teeth.**

**The heat in his chest grew where Zeus's claw were in. Unbearably burning as both consumed each other from the inside. Both stood a stand still in their struggle, having spent all their violent tricks beneath the stormy rain. Now they fought a molecular war. Thunder boomed. Black and black-red tendrils splitting from their forms against each others will.**

**"Fuck you!" Alex hissed as both were swallowed in a swirl of tendril.**

**A pull and a rush of heat, the world flipped and Pariah stumbled back, having rejected quickly as artificial Blacklight suceeded at pushing him back.**

**Alex just skid across the ground, the rejection shoving him off violently as well. He looked up and raised his hands but stopped to gawp.**

**"What the..." Pariah looked at his hand, claws now.**

**Lightning flashed, and the hooded form illuminated, revealing Alex Mercer's confuse face with... green eyes? Zeus looked at... his own body in confusion before looking at his current body. He saw the silver belt, he saw his lack of hood and jacket. He was wearing a black turtleneck.**

**"Fuck," Alex whispered, Patrick Gordon's new blue eyes widening at the dilemma. They somehow switched bodies. With a frown, Zeus mentally twitched, expecting a change back to his form but he screamed in pain at the sudden burn in his flesh. It was like... Pariah had injected parasite strain again. Uncontrollable tendrils flickered across his body. Pariah tried the same only to be slammed with a headache that grew stronger as he tried to control Zeus's own body to become him, like his own body. But it felt like being hit by a wall everytime. He felt... stunted. Stunted in a young Blacklight's body. For some reason the usual things that he make his own body do was met with pain. He breathed quickly, green eyes widened, understanding the situation.**

**"Your body..." he said, shuddering. "is at adolescent stage!"**

**Alex glared at that.**

**"I can't change! This cannot be happening!" Alex-Pariah snapped, Gordon's voice coming out of the hooded being. This was weird, fucking weird. Alex thought, so confused. "I have to go to a parent's teacher interview for Hank tonight!"**

**Patrick-Zeus got up, shaken. "Dana's expecting me with groceries," he said this quietly then both Blacklights looked at each other. Both immediately rushed, and tried to consume each other, repeating the earlier process. With a black swarm of tendrils, they were rejected again but not without a change.**

**"Mother... fooping!" Pariah snarled after he checked his face again. He looked at Alex with Alex's own face. Still fucking weird, Alex thought. "You've got to go to the interview," he said, more like ordered.**

**"What?" Alex's rough voice snapped out of the blonde man's mouth. "I'm not going to do that!"**

**"Zeus, if you don't do as I say I will blackmail and tell the girl what you've been up to," Pariah snapped.**

**Dana will chew him out then. He couldn't underestimate his sister's anger, because last time he did, he had to stay outside for a month... in Houston horrible rainy weather.**

**"Fine!" Alex snapped. "But you've got to do the same! Buy Dana grocery, get there fast and on time. Late, and she'll know something is up."**

**"Deal!" Pariah snapped.**

* * *

**Dana looked at her quiet brother, who avoided her gaze often.**

**"Are you alright, Alex?" she asked her shifty brother.**

**"Yes," an unfamilliar, different American accent came out of his mouth. "I mean yeah! I meant... yeah," he corrected quickly with rough gravelly voice.**

**Dana stared at her brother for a long time. "Look at me," she suddenly said.**

**"What?"**

**"Look. At. Me."**

**He turned slowly, green eyes looked back at the blue unwillingly.**

**"Jesus, Patrick. I don't know how this happened or why you're... using my brother body. But please, stop."**

**"Queen Bee, I would like to. But I'm stuck."**

* * *

**"Dad, are you alright?" the chinese boy asked, staring at his quiet father who was fidgeting and fuming while he paced back and forth.**

**"I'm fine," he told him with a rough voice.**

**Hank frowned at that voice, then blinked when he noticed icy blue eyes.**

**"Why your eyes like that?" the boy said.**

**"What?"**

**"Your eyes. It's blue."**

**Fuck, "Shit," Patrick said hoarsely, but then smiled weakly when a parent waiting nearby heard and glared at him. "Uh..." he groped when Hank looked at him strangely. "Y'know what, let's... just leave," he snapped quickly.**

**Hank just stared. Perhaps his father got a sore throat or something, and decided to wear contact lenses... for some reason. But then his father was always a bit... weird. "Okay." The boy hopped off his chair and walked off.**

**Alex just sighed and rushed after the boy, hating being inside school already... with so many kids and their parents. He rushed out and immediately prepared to run.**

**"Dad, where are you going?" the boy called as he stood... beside a silver sedan.**

**Alex just grunted in frustration at the idea of closed space around him.**

* * *

**"I'm not going to say it!" Patrick crossed his arms stubbornly.**

**"You tell me what my brother has been up to, right now!" Dana shouted.**

**"Nope."**

**"PATRI-"**

**Someone's phone rang and Alex's face... well its Patrick's now, frowned and his hand went inside his chest, much to Dana's gagging and revulsion as he searched his biomass, then picked out a ringing phone. He answered the call and put it at his ears.**

**"I need your help," his own voice greeted him, sounding desperate.**

**Hell... is that how he sound like? Dana tried to snatch the phone but he pulled away quickly. He wished he could infect her, make her sleep that's all, but Zeus own body and virus was even rebelling at his own effort of control. Rigid, stunted, and inducing unhappy feelings... like Zeus. Best not to risk it.**

**"What's wrong?" he asked sharply, fighting off Queen Bee who was now on his back as she tried to snatch the phone.**

**"You happen to own a freezer from hell?"**

**What?**

* * *

**"Is that Alex? Is that him!" he winced at his sister's voice and the sound of struggling in the background.**

**"Ignore Queen Bee. So what did you mean by freezer from hell?" Pariah asked quickly as Alex stared at the freezer... with something black oozing out of the door, growing black slimy veins across the garage's floor and wall. Nightmare fuel for Hank.**

**The boy had ran off screaming when he saw that.**

**"I'll rephrase," Alex said hoarsely. "You happen to store your biomass in a freezer?"**

**"Yeah."**

**"Well it's now growing out of control."**

**"...Fuck."**

* * *

**Alex's Blacklight hasn't unlock everything in the genetic, so to Pariah, it felt like being in a teenager's body. Equivalent with having to go through puberty. Seventeen again, hah!**

**And with Alex haven't learn the immense control, well Pariah's employees is going to face sudden mood swing... due to Alex's bitchiness conveying into them, much to Alex being oblivious that he was doing this to them. Violence, rage and all that in the office. Not good for Jenny, Pariah's pregnant secretary, not good for all of them.**


End file.
